Preamble

The House met—after the adjournment, on 6th June, for the Whitsuntide Recess—at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, -Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Sheffield Corporation Bill,

Read the third time, and passed.

Llanelly Rural District Water Bill,

Legal and General Life Assurance Society Bill [Lords],

London County Council (General Powers) Bill,

As amended, considered; to be read the third time.

Falmouth Docks Bill [Lords],

Newark Gas Bill [Lords],

Poole Corporation Bill [Lords]

Sheringham Gas and Water Bill [Lords]

Read a second time, and committed.

Bridge of Allan Water Order Confirmation Bill,

Considered; to be read the third time To-morrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEUTSCHE-ASIATISCHE BANK, CHINA.

Commander BELLAIRS: 1.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the liquidation of the Deutsche-Asiatische Bank in China is now completed?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Cecil Harmsworth): His Majesty's Minister at Peking reports under date of 16th June that the position in regard to the Deutsche-Asiatische Bank at Shanghai is as follows: Considerable progress has been made by the present liquidator, who is the manager of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank at Shanghai, with selling enemy property and real estate in satisfaction of the bank's claims and little remains to be done in that direction. The liquidation of local accounts is practically finished. The bank's foreign and Chinese staff have been dismissed. Its premises have been sold, and its organisation in Shanghai completely broken up.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMANY AND RUSSIA.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 2.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs whether he can now state if the German troops under General von der Goltz advanced upon Riga with Allied permission; whether they have suppressed the anti-Bolshevik peasants' government at Riga; and what steps the Allies have now taken to compel these Germans to withdraw to their own territory?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. As regards the second part, our information is that Balt Landwehr, who do not recognise the authority of M. Ulmani's Provisional Government, completely control the administration of Riga assisted by German forces. As regards the last part of the question, Marshal Foch has directed that a communication should be addressed to the German Military Authorities ordering:

(1) The cessation of all further advance Northward towards Esthonia.
(2) The immediate evacuation of Windau and Libau, and the complete evacuation with the least possible delay, in accordance with Article 12 of the Armistice Convention, of all territory which formed part of Russia before the War.

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

BONUS (COST OF LIVING).

Sir KINGSLEY WOOD: 3.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will give further consideration to the request of ex-soldiers, pensioners from the old Army, to have their pensions augmented in the same way as soldiers now drawing disability pensions on account of the increase of the cost of living?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Forster): My hon. Friend is doubtless aware that Admiral Jerram's Committee proposed an extension of the revised scale of Naval Service pensions to all Naval pensioners on the rolls, and that the Government decided to extend it only to such existing pensioners as are now serving or have served in the War. This decision will govern the consideration now being given to the scale of Army pensions.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Is he not aware that the Admiralty are reconsidering that points

Mr. FORSTER: The Admiralty are bound by the decision of the Government.

Mr. HOGGE: Will my right hon. Friend say why the War Office should give 20 per cent. war bonus on disability pensions on account of increased cost of living and refuse a similar 20 per cent. to the ex-soldiers?

Mr. FORSTER: I think there is a great distinction to be drawn between disability pensions and service pensions. Disability pensions are given to compensate to some extent for loss of earning power, but service pensions are given in recognition of long service, as the hon. Member knows very well.

OUTSTANDING PAY AND ALLOWANCES.

Mr. HURD: 12.
asked the Financial Secretary to the War Office why Private E. C. Norville, No. 2053G, A Company, 52nd Hants Regiment, at present attached to the Royal Defence Corps, Ancotts, near Doncaster, received only 7s. per week Army Pay from October, 1917, until 11th February, 1919; why from 11th February, 1919, he has received only 17s. per week instead of 21s. per week; why his mother, Mrs. Clara L. Norville, did not receive payment of the Government allowance of 2s. per week from 20th August, 1917, until 23rd July, 1918, although her son's identity certificate, No. V 522414, was received by her on 24th August, 1917, along with the authority for her to draw a voluntary allotment of 3s. 6d. per week made to her by her son; and whether further steps can be taken to quicken the settlement of outstanding questions of pay and allowances?

Mr. FORSTER: Pay has been credited to this soldier at the following rates: 1s. a day from 20th August, 1917, to 28th September, 1917; 1s. 6d. a day from 29th September, 1917, to 19th August, 1918; and 1s. 7d. a day from 20th August, 1918, to 31st January, 1919; 3s. 1d. a day from 1st February, 1919. From these rates a voluntary allotment of 6d. a day has been deducted in each case, and has been paid to the man's mother throughout. From 23rd May, 1918, she has been paid, in addition, dependant's allowance of 2s. a week, which was increased to 5s. a week from 5th November, 1918. Dependant's allow-
ance is issuable from the date from which a claim is made, which date in this case was 23rd May, 1918.

DISABILITY PENSIONS.

Mr. NEWBOULD: 16.
asked the Pensions Minister if he will explain why the 20 per cent. bonus is payable on disability pensions awarded under the warrants of 1917–18 and not on pensions granted under earlier warrants; and if he will say upon what authority the bonus is refused on the latter?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Colonel Sir James Craig): My right hon. Friend is looking into this matter, and I should be obliged if the hon. Member would repeat his question in a week or two.

Mr. NEWBOULD: 17.
asked the Pensions Minister if he will say whether a man who on dispersal was medically examined and assessed a 40 per cent. disability, and who transferred to Army Reserve, is entitled to pension; and, if not, will he give the number of the Army Order or Regulation under which his claim is invalid?

Sir J. CRAIG: A man who on demobilisation and transfer to the Reserve is found to have a disability caused or aggravated by his military service is entitled to a pension or gratuity according to the extent of his incapacity. If he is refused pension by the Ministry on the ground that his disability was neither caused nor aggravated by service, he can appeal to the Pensions Appeal Tribunal.

Mr. HOGGE: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman say whether the assessment by the medical officer on demobilisation as to the percentage of disability pension governs the pension, or whether it is decided later by the Ministry of Pensions without seeing the man?

Sir J. CRAIG: In the first instance, on demobilisation, as far as possible, the necessary form is filled up, but, where it is not, the medical referee is asked for his opinion, and on that opinion the pension is assessed.

Mr. HOGGE: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that, a very large number of men who were assessed a percentage disability on demobilisation are receiving less pension without seeing anyone?

Sir J. CRAIG: No; I do not think that is so.

Mr. HOGGE: It is so.

Sir J. CRAIG: I do not think it is so. Of course, the hon. Gentleman will understand that at present there is a great pressure on account of demobilisation, and, sooner than have cases delayed, we are doing everything we possibly can to catch up all cases on demobilisation, and any pensions awarded of a temporary nature will be reviewed at a later date after demobilisation.

TUBERCULOSIS (ROYAL NAVY).

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 19.
asked the Pensions Minister whether a decision has been come to with regard to men who were invalided from the Royal Navy before the War for tuberculosis; and whether he will consider granting a pension to these men in view of the additional medical evidence on this disease brought to light during the War?

Sir J. CRAIG: My right hon. Friend is not prepared to revise the findings of the Admiralty in the case of men invalided from the Royal Navy before the War, nor is lie aware of any additional medical evidence which would justify him in doing so.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: May I ask why a man who was invalided from the Navy with tuberculosis before the War, gets no pension, whereas a man invalided from the Navy with tuberculosis during the War receives a pension?

Sir J. CRAIG: I have just explained to my hon. and gallant Friend that it would be impossible to revise all cases that were settled by the Admiralty before the War.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEMOBILISATION.

COMPASSIONATE GROUNDS.

Mr. CHARLES WHITE: 4.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether he has made himself acquainted with the Regulations governing the release of soldiers on compassionate grounds; whether he is aware that the conditions laid down are almost impossible of fulfilment, especially the Regulation relating to a widow claiming the release of her son; whether ho is aware that many of these widows are seventy years of age; whether he knows
that to successfully claim release of her son a widow must have two children dependent on her as well as being unable to earn anything herself; and whether he is prepared to make any changes in the conditions of release on compassionate grounds?

Captain GUEST (Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury): As the House was informed in the Debate on the Army Estimates on the 29th May, my right hon. Friend is considering whether compassionate cases on other than purely family grounds cannot now come into consideration, at any rate, for a limited number. In addition to the information which was given to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for York on the 6th June with regard to the probable number of soldiers who will be demobilised as a result of the recent Regulations, I may say that the actual number demobilised during the first month after the issue of the Regulations was 5,252.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Will the new Regulations extending compassionate grounds be published shortly?

Captain GUEST: Yes, very shortly indeed now.

Mr. C. WHITE: Does he really expect widows of seventy years of age to have two children of school age dependent on them?

OFFICERS.

Mr. C. WHITE: 5.
asked the Secretary of State for War if he will state how many officers were demobilised between 11th November, 1918, and 1st June, 1919; and how many are now employed or serving on full pay?

Captain GUEST: As my hon. Friend was informed on the 5th instant, the number of officers demobilised up to the 3rd June was 103,672, and the number still serving was, approximately, 71,000, of whom about 11,000 were either in hospital or awaiting demobilisation. I may add that the latest return up to the 18th June shows 109,494 officers demobilised.

ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS (MECHANICAL TRANSPORT).

Mr. HURD: 7.
asked the Secretary of State for War if he can now state the result of his inquiries into the allegation of soldiers in the Army of Occupation that mechanical transport men in the Royal
Army Medical Corps are not being released fairly according to length of service, etc., under the terms of the Government scheme of demobilisation; whether men are being retained solely because their unit is in general headquarters troops; whether men from other mechanical transport units are being demobilised with less service than men in such general headquarters units; an[...]what steps he proposes to take?

Captain GUEST: The General Officer Commanding-in-Chief the Army of the Rhine has been asked to inquire into this matter and report whether there is any basis for the allegations to which my hon. Friend alludes. A reply has not yet been received.

Mr. HURD: Was not that request made three weeks ago?

Captain GUEST: Yes; the reply has not yet been received.

Mr. HURD: Can he expedite this reply?

Captain GUEST: Yes, I will.

DERBY GROUP MEN.

Mr. RAMSDEN: 8.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether he can yet make any statement as to the early liberation of the men who enlisted under the Derby scheme?

Captain GUEST: I. regret I can add nothing at present to the statements which my right hon. Friend made in the House on the 29th May and 5th June regarding the release of "Derby" men, of which there are some 300,000. As he stated on the 29th May, he cannot release the whole number immediately, but when Peace has been signed he hopes it will be possible gradually to diminish the military forces which we are keeping at our disposal. The claims of the 1914 and 1915 men for release must not, however, be forgotten.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Am I right in supposing that no Derby men will be sent out in drafts in India?

Captain GUEST: Yes, that pledge has been given in the House.

Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING: Will he also consider the cases of conscript men who were refused enlistment repeatedly on medical grounds but were subsequently conscripted under the Conscription Acts?

Captain GUEST: Yes, that category will also be considered.

Mr. A. SHAW: Is he aware that Derby men are at present being sent out in drafts, although medically rejected in 1914 and 1915?

Captain GUEST: Not to India.

Mr. SHAW: If I give him information as to that, will he do his best to avoid sending back the stereotyped answer, which is the answer I have received?

EXPERT WORKERS.

Mr. RAMSDEN: 40.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware of the large number of expansions of industry which could be brought about by the liberation of specialist and expert workers who are still retained in the Army; and whether, in view of the existing unemployment, he proposes to press upon the Secretary of State for War the early consideration of all these cases?

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Sir Robert Home): I am aware that there are men still serving in the Army whose return to civil life might promote opportunities of work for others; and in suitable cases that have been brought to my notice, I have made representations to the Army Council with a view to obtaining early demobilisation.

REGULATIONS.

Lieut.-Colonel Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for War what relaxations will be made in the existing Regulations governing the demobilisation of men in the Army consequent on the consent of the German Government to sign the Peace Treaty?

Captain GUEST: I regret that I can add nothing at present to the statement which my right hon. Friend made on this subject on the 29th May, but I can assure my Noble Friend that the whole matter is engaging the attention of the Secretary of State.

Oral Answers to Questions — WAR OFFICE STAFF.

Mr. ARNOLD: 9.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will state the number of the staff of the War Office on 31st May, 1919, as compared with the number on the date of the Armistice, 11th November, 1918?

Captain GUEST: The number of the staff of the War Office on 11th November, 1918,
was 21,472, and on 31st May, 1919, 15,721. In March 3,441 of the staff were transferred to the Ministry of Supply. The reduction in the staff of the War Office is, therefore, 2,310 during the period in question.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMY CADETS (COST OF TRAINING).

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 10.
asked the Secretary of State for War if he can state what is the annual cost to the parents of a cadet at Sandhurst and Woolwich during the cadet's period of training; and what provision is made for the sons of poor parents to enter the Army through Sandhurst and Woolwich?

Mr. FORSTER: Before the War the full fee was £150 a year, with contributions in addition amounting to £50 in two years for outfit, books, etc. For sons of Army or Navy officers the annual fee was reduced to from £80 to £20, according to the father's rank and other circumstances. There are also King's cadetships for sons of officers whose deaths were due to service and whose families were left in straitened circumstances. These excuse payment of all fees and contributions, and give £65 outfit allowance on joining the Army. And there are prize cadetships won by competition at the entrance examination which reduce the annual fee to £80, excuse the contributions and carry the outfit allowance of £65. Future arrangements are under consideration.

Oral Answers to Questions — QUEEN MARY'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 11.
asked the Secretary of State for War if the will state what was the numerical strength, officers and other ranks, respectively, of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on the 1st November, 1918, and the 1st June, 1919?

Captain GUEST: The numbers of the Queen Mary's Auxiliary Corps on the 1st November, 1918, were: Officials, 1,077; members, 39,565; and on the 1st June last: Officials, 823; members, 24,919.

Oral Answers to Questions — ALIENS IN UNITED KINGDOM.

Mr. LYLE: 13.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department the
number of aliens who have entered this country during the last six months, distinguishing them according to nationality?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Shortt): I will circulate a statement showing the numbers and main nationalities of alien passengers who have landed in this country each week since the end of last March, at which date the lessening pressure of war work first rendered it possible to keep the statistics available from week to week. It will be seen that the weekly average is 3,508, of whom more than two-thirds are French, Belgians, Americans, and Italians. I may add that a very large proportion of these passengers are en route to other countries, and of the rest a large percentage arc business men and officials making repeated journeys to and fro.

The statement referred to is as follows:—


NUMBER OF ALIEN PASSENGERS LANDED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. Classified according to Nationality.


During week ending
 Nationality. 


French.
Belgians.
Scandinavians (including Danes).
U.S.A.
Italians.
Dutch.
Other Nationalities.
Total.


29–3–19
…
656
537
296
365
158
163
302
2,477


5–4–19
…
674
605
472
463
206
198
410
3,028


12–4–19
…
739
703
307
666
222
227
479
3,343


19–4–19
…
698
561
306
611
266
148
365
2,955


26–4–19
…
787
852
272
374
194
231
463
3,173


3–5–19 
…
867
856
413
498
342
174
506
3,656


10–5–19
…
1,003
942
469
755
246
260
605
4,280


17–6–19
…
869
795
428
403
304
282
435
3,516


24–5–19
…
839
821
478
572
313
296
665
3,984


31–5–19
…
770
797
452
633
321
229
470
3,672


7–6–19
…
883
790
477
966
298
225
540
4,179


14–6–19
…
907
699
381
631 
389
238
592
3,837

Mr. LYLE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is perfectly satisfied that amongst that large number there are not a large number of dangerous criminals?

Mr. SHORTT: There may be some dangerous criminals that get in by error, but they are certainly not a large number.

Mr. LYLE: 39.
asked the Minister of Labour whether the Labour Exchanges record on their lists of unemployed the names of many aliens; and whether preference is given in all cases of potential employment to British-born subjects?

Sir R.HORNE: The number of aliens included in the lists of unemployed recorded at the Exchanges is very small. In all cases of potential employment, preference is given to British subjects; and no alien is placed by an Exchange in a vacancy for which suitable British labour is available.

Mr. BILLING: Is it not a fact that hundreds and thousands of British labourers are receiving unemployment pay while thousands of aliens are doing work which the British unemployed could be doing, and will the right hon. Gentleman recommend to the Government that some steps should be taken to rectify this?

Sir R. HORNE: I am not aware of what the hon. Member suggests.

Mr. BILLING: Is it not a fact that many aliens are actually drawing unemployment pay in this country to-day?

Sir R. HORNE: There may be exceptional cases of them drawing unemployment pay.

Mr. BILLING: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to continue the practice of the British taxpayers paying unemployment pay to aliens?

Sir R. HORNE: That depends entirely upon the circumstances under which the aliens were brought here and the work they are employed upon.
The following question stood upon the Paper in the name of Sir J. BUTCHER:
49. To ask the Prime Minister whether he is now in a position to publish the Report of Lord Justice Bankes' Committee on the employment in the Civil Service of aliens and persons of alien descent, which was presented to the Prime Minister on 14th February last; what is the number of aliens and persons of alien descent found by that Report to be employed in the Civil Service; and how soon will the Government commence to take action on the Report?

Sir J. BUTCHER: Inasmuch as the Report to which this question relates has been published, I desire only to ask the last part of the question?

Mr. SHORTT: The Report has been published and contains the information that the hon. Baronet requires. As to the last part of the question, I am not in a position to make any statement.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Has any action at all been taken upon the Report of that Committee?

Mr. SHORTT: I am not in a position to make any statement.

Oral Answers to Questions — BOLSHEVISM.

Mr. LYLE: 14.
asked the Home Secretary if the police are in possession of recent evidences of Bolshevist activity in this country; and if he can state, in that case, what form they take?

Mr. SHORTT: Some evidence of the nature indicated in the question is in the hands of the police, but it would not be in the public interest to give any details at present.

Captain R. TERRELL: What steps are the Government taking to stamp out Bolshevism in this country?

Mr. SHORTT: I do not think it is advisable for me to give any details.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: Has the right hon. Gentleman's attention been called to a daily paper called the "Daily Herald," and certain revelations respecting its character and the influence behind it which recently appeared in a weekly journal of high character?

Mr. SHORTT: Yes, Sir, I have seen both.

Mr. DONALD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Bolshevist propaganda work is going on in Ireland at the present time?

Mr. SHORTT: I am not aware of that, but I will ask that the question be put to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. BILLING: Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to state that if any evidence is forthcoming that satisfies the Government, firm action will be taken and due notice will be given that it will be done?

Mr. SHORTT: I cannot say anything; about due notice, but firm action will be taken.

Mr. LYLE: 38.
asked the Minister of Labour if he has received any recent evidences of Bolshevist activity in promoting industrial unrest?

Sir R. HORNE: I am not aware that any special evidence has recently emerged of industrial unrest having been directly promoted by Bolshevist activity.

Mr. LYLE: Has not the right hon. Gentleman evidence of Bolshevist activities in the area of the coal mines?

Sir R. HORNE: No, there is no special evidence of that kind. Bolshevist activity is widespread and is going on all the time and is in no way special at the present time.

Sir E. CARSON: Can the right hon. Gentleman define "Bolshevists?"

Oral Answers to Questions — LOCAL WAR PENSIONS SUB-COMMITTEES.

Mr. RAMSDEN: 18.
asked the Pensions Minister the exact nature of the alterations in the personnel of the local war pensions sub-committees; whether he has received any representations on the matter; and whether he is taking any action in accordance with them?

Sir J. CRAIG: The constitution of local sub-committees is now regulated by the "Proceedings of Committees Regulations, 1019," made under Section 5 of the War Pensions (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1918. I am sending the hon. Member a copy of the Regulations, and would particularly refer him to those numbered 29–31. My right hon. Friend has received representations with regard to particular sub-committees, and has taken such action as appears to be desirable.

Oral Answers to Questions — SMALL HOLDINGS.

EX-SERVICEMEN'S APPLICATIONS (SCOTLAND).

Mr. HOGGE: 20.
asked the Secretary for Scotland the number of applications which have been received from ex-Service men for settlement as small holders in Scotland under the Small Holding (Colonies) Act; the date when each parcel of land was purchased; and the number of small holdings which can be provided out of the land so acquired?

The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. Clyde): As the answer is somewhat lengthy, my right hon. Friend is circulating the information in the Official Report.

The answer referred to is as follows

I understand that, without taking into account numbers of applicants who applied as civilians, and have not yet been identified as having been on service, 1,296 applications were received by the Board of Agriculture for Scotland from Service men up to 31st May, 1919. At that date the Board had purchased or concluded agreements for purchase of the following properties under the Small Holding (Colonies) Acts:



Acres.


At Whitsuntide,1918, Mid and Nether Locharwood, Dumfriesshire 
555


At Martinmas, 1918, Arabella Easter, Ross
644


At Whitsuntide, 1919, Foulden, Lamberton and Mordington, Berwickshire
4,107


Dysart, Fifeshire
671


Gagie, Forfarshire
1,484


Castle Huntly, Perthshire
689


Geanies Easter, Ross
530


At Martinmas, 1919, Fortrie, Aberdeenshire 
836


Moy, Argyllshire
330


Maxwood, Ayrshire
239


Total
10,085

So far the Board have only secured vacant possession of Midlocharwoods, Arabella, and Geanies, but other farms fall out of lease at Martinmas and succeeding terms. It is not possible at this stage to reply to the last part of the question.

Mr. HOGGE: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman say if a single man has been placed on the land under the Small Holding (Colonies) Act?

Mr. CLYDE: I think the information that will be circulated will meet the point.

Mr. HOGGE: 21.
asked the Secretary for Scotland whether any special official of the Scottish Board of Agriculture is at present charged with the supervision of the schemes for land settlement of ex-Service men in Scotland; whether any schemes have yet been completed under which particular small holdings have been allotted to individual applicants; and the number of small holdings to which entry will be obtained by Martinmas, 1919?

Mr. CLYDE: This branch of the Boards work is in the charge of the Small Holding Commissioner, who has the assistance of four sub-commissioners and four assistants; and these numbers are in process of being materially increased. Several schemes have been completed, and thirty-five holdings and one enlargement bad been allotted to ex-Service men as at 31st May last, in addition to which employment has been given on farms in the Board's occupation to eighteen prospective holders who are discharged soldiers. The number of holdings to which' entry can be given at Martinmas, 1919, depends so largely on the practicability of equipping them with buildings that any estimate now given would be unreliable. It is hoped to overcome the difficulty in part by the use of Army huts, of which the Board have acquired a large number.

Mr. HOGGE: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the thirty-five men to whom he refers were registered smallholders before the War and have only been put back? Can he say whether any single new man has been put on the land?

Mr. CLYDE: I am not sure I can accept the suggestion that the whole of these thirty-five men were smallholders before the War. I have no further information to give my hon. Friend than I have already given him.

PROGRESS OF SCHEMES.

Captain R. TERRELL: 24.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction which exists with regard to the slow progress made in the provision of small holdings; and what steps he proposes to take to expedite it?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir Arthur Boscawen): The Board are fully
aware of the dissatisfaction referred to, and every effort is being made to expedite progress. Forty-five thousand acres have already been acquired, and negotiations are in progress for an additional 100,000 acres, but it is urgent that the Land Settlement Bill should be passed into law, so that the process of acquiring land and obtaining vacant possession may be expedited. In the meantime, the Board are urging county councils to use their existing powers of acquisition to the fullest possible extent, but, as no land could be purchased prior to the Armistice, some time must elapse before the necessary houses and buildings can be erected and the holdings are ready for occupation.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING SCHEMES (SCOTLAND).

Mr. HOGGE: 22.
asked the Secretary for Scotland whether he can state the number of housing schemes which have been approved up to 15th June?

Mr. CLYDE: Up to 15th June the Local Government Board for Scotland have approved sixty-one site schemes, involving 1,160 acres of land. Forty-two lay-out schemes have been approved for a total area of 622 acres. The Local Government Board have approved twenty-three house-plan schemes for the erection of 11,089 houses.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAY ADMINISTRATION.

INCREASED COST AND REVENUE.

Major NEWMAN: 25.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether the estimate, amounting to about £106,000,000, of the increased cost of running the railways under Government control to 31st March, 1920, as compared with the year 1913, includes any cost of making good maintenance in arrears and provision for extra wear and tear; and, if the above estimate be accepted as a reasonable forecast, will he say what will be the total sum to be borne by the taxpayer after the shareholder has received his guaranteed dividend in respect of the year ending 31st March, 1920?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Bridge-man): The estimate of increased expenditure referred to is an estimate of the effect of increased cost of labour and materials,
and does not include any allowance for abnormal maintenance work. The amount that will be borne by the taxpayers under the Government agreement with the railways does not depend solely on the increased cost of railway working, and I am not prepared at present to say what it is likely to be. I may add that railway dividends are not guaranteed by the Government, but the railways are guaranteed the aggregate net receipts of 1913.

Sir E. CARSON: Can my right hon. Friend say whether before the Transport Bill comes on for Report we can have accurate figures of the estimated loss on the railways, subject to present conditions in regard to necessary expenditure?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: That question is under consideration.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: In arriving at these figures can the hon. Gentleman tell me whether the War Office has been charged with the full rates for carrying troops and munitions?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am not clear what the hon. Gentleman means by full rates. Are they the rates chargeable under the Act?

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: The current rate. The 50 per cent. increase.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I do not think so. I will inquire, and let my hon. Friend know. But I think the War Office are charged according to the provisions of the-Cheap Trains Act.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: Does the hon. Gentleman not see in that case that putting the entire loss upon the shoulders of the travelling public is putting a special tax upon that public as distinguished from the whole of the country?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I see the point,

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that!

Major NEWMAN: 26.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether the Railway Executive Committee have been able to form any estimate of the total revenue that will be earned by the railways for the year ending 31st March, 1920, in respect of goods-train traffic and passenger-train traffic; if so, how do these amounts compare with the year 1913; and are they made on the assumption that the
travelling public are still charged a 50 per cent. increase and the charge for goods traffic is not increased?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: My right hon. Friend is consulting the Railway Executive to see if it is possible to frame a satisfactory estimate, but is not very sanguine that any useful result will be obtained.

Sir E. CARSON: Are we to take it that before the statements in reference to the Transport Bill were given to this House that no estimate was made of the realities of the situation?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The estimate to which ray hon. and learned Friend refers was not made by the Board of Trade, but it is naturally one that, to a large extent, is a matter of opinion.

Mr. BILLING: While the Government are making up their minds in this connection, will the hon. Gentleman represent to the Department that hundreds and thousands of small children are prevented, owing to the increase of fare, from going into the country?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: That does not arise on the question, but I am doing all I can to get the fullest possible facilities for the children.

Major NEWMAN: 27.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether the accounts for the railways working under Government control have only been partially completed for the year 1917; will he say when the audit for 1917 will be completed and that for 1918 undertaken; and in what way will the result of the audit for these two years be made known to the shareholders and to the taxpayer?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Railway companies' accounts for 1917 and 1918 have already been completed as required by the Railway Companies (Accounts and Returns) Act, 1911, so far as that Act now applies. Any sums which, as the result of the further investigation of those accounts on behalf of the Government, may be found to be payable to or by the railway companies would be brought into account later. They will be published in due course.

Major NEWMAN: Will the hon. Gentleman answer the last part of my question; in what way will the result of the audit for these two years be made known?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have said it will be brought into the accounts later and published in due course.

Major NEWMAN: When is "due course"?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: When all these things are brought into account.

Oral Answers to Questions — PROHIBITED IMPORTS.

Mr. G. TERRELL: 28.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if the Advisory Committee dealing with imports has been dissolved; and if he can state what arrangements have been made in its place to carry on the work?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The Committee referred to has been discontinued, having completed the task of revising the list of prohibited imports. In the circumstances no arrangements to carry on the work appear necessary.

Mr. TERRELL: As these restrictions expire on 1st September next may I ask whether on and after that date the British market will be absolutely open to unrestricted competition?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The decisions arrived at on the advice of the Committee referred to have to be reconsidered by 1st September, but there is nothing in the undertaking given that they will not be continued; they have to be reconsidered.

Mr. TERRELL: By whom will they be reconsidered?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The whole question will be reconsidered by the Government.

Captain W. BENN: Will the licences be varied between now and 1st September?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The decision arrived at at present does not contemplate any change between now and 1st September, unless, in the meantime, the Government announce some other policy.

Captain TERRELL: Arising out of that answer I would ask if Germany will be allowed to dump goods into this country?

HON. MEMBERS: "Never," and "They are doing so now!"

Mr. SPEAKER: That question is remote from the one on the Paper.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH MILLS (FOREIGN FLOUR).

Captain TERRELL: 29.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, owing to the large imports of foreign flour, the British mills are running short time; and what is the decrease in the number of men these employ now as compared with one year ago?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY OF FOOD (Mr. McCurdy): I have been asked to reply. So far from British mills running abnormally short time the deliveries of flour from these mills during the first five months of this year have exceeded by over 200,000 sacks the quantity delivered during the corresponding period of last year. The number of men employed in British mills at the present time is considerably in excess of the number employed last year; this increase is due, in part, to the adoption of the eight-hour shift system.

Oral Answers to Questions — TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE SERVICES.

Mr. STEWART: 33.
asked the Postmaster-General whether the telegram department of the General Post Office is being run at a loss of over £1,000,000 a year, and the telephone department at a loss of over £400,000 a year; and, whether, if these valuable Government monopolies cannot be run at a profit, they can be placed upon a basis to clear expenses and to provide for interest on capital and for depreciation, so that those who avail themselves of these departments pay for their own messages and the general body of taxpayers be relieved of the annual cost making good the deficits incurred?

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Illingworth): The Commercial Accounts for the year 1917–18 showed a deficiency of £556,330 in respect of the Telegraph Service, and a surplus of £355,468 for the Telephone Service. In both cases the balance was arrived at after providing for interest on the capital value of the plant and buildings and for pension liability and depreciation of plant. The Accounts for 1918–19 will be much less favourable owing to the largely increased war bonus paid to the staff, amounting to £1,250,000 for the Telegraph Service and to nearly £1,500,000 for the Telephone Service, and the lose on the two Services will be about the sums
mentioned by the hon. Member. The deficiency will be substantially larger for 1919–20. The war bonus is estimated at over £2,000,000 for the Telegraph Service and about £2,500,000 for the Telephone Service. In addition the cost of materials has increased and the charges for pension liability and depreciation will be higher. I am considering the question of increasing the rates charged to the public.

Mr. STEWART: Could the right hon. Gentleman say what, approximately, is the amount of national capital locked up in these two non-paying Services. Is it not the case that when these two Services were run by private enterprise they showed a profit?

Mr. ILLINGWORTH: I should like to have notice of that question.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: In view of the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that he is thinking of charging the public more, will he consider the advisability of giving greater conveniences to the public in regard to the use of the telephone?

Mr. ILLINGWORTH: Certainly, Sir! I hope in the course of a few days to be able to make a full statement on the subject.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Do the figures include any interest on the capital sum for the purchase of these undertakings?

Mr. ILLINGWORTH: In my reply I said that provision is made for interest on the capital.

Sir H. DALZIEL: Will my right hon. Friend consider the advisability of asking Government Departments to send their communications by post instead of by telegram?

Mr. ILLINGWORTH: That has frequently been done.

Mr. KENNEDY JONES: Do the figures as to loss include depreciation

Mr. ILLINGWORTH: I said so in my reply.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE MAIL TUBE.

Commander BELLAIRS: 34.
asked the Postmaster-General when the Post Office mail tube will be in use, and whether it is proposed be bring more tubes into opera
tion, in order to relieve the traffic on the streets which may be anticipated in the future?

Mr. ILLINGWORTH: The running tunnel has been completed, but until further progress has been made with the remainder of the work, including the electrical plant, I cannot say when the railway will be open for traffic. I do not propose to consider the construction of any further underground railways for the conveyance of mails until experience has been gained of the actual working of the railway now being constructed.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF WAYS AND COMMUNICATIONS BILL.

EMPLOYMENT OF RAILWAY OFFICIALS.

Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: 35.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury what members of the staff of the North-Eastern Railway Company have been, are, or are proposed to be employed in connection with the Ministry of Ways and Communications; what remuneration they were receiving at the railway; what it is proposed they should receive at the Ministry; and what are the other terms of their employment?

Mr. BALDWIN (Joint Financial Secretary to the Treasury): Sir Francis Dunnell and Lieutenant-Colonel Beharrell, of the North-Eastern Railway Company, have been, and are being, employed in connection with the Ministry of Ways and Communications. It is proposed that when the Ministry is established Lieutenant-Colonel Beharrell should leave the service of the company and be appointed to a post in the Ministry with a salary of £2,500 a year.

Mr. HOGGE: Have these gentlemen been drawing salaries both from the North-Eastern Railway Company and the Government?

Mr. BALDWIN: No, Sir; they are still lent, and are not paid any public money.

Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: 36.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury what remuneration Sir Francis Dunnell was drawing from the North-Eastern Railway Company and what he is going to receive from the Government as general secretary to the Ministry of Ways and Communications?

Mr. BALDWIN: As stated in my reply to my hon. Friend on Wednesday, 4th June, Sir Francis Dunnell will continue to receive, while his services are loaned to the Government, the same salary as he was drawing from the North-Eastern Railway Company. If, at a later date, Sir Francis Dunnell is permanently transferred to the Government service, his salary will be such as the Treasury may approve. The emoluments which he is now receiving are a personal matter between the directors of the company and Sir Francis Dunnell.

Mr. R. McNEILL: Can the hon. Gentleman say, in the event of this gentleman going to the Ministry, he will receive ft lump sum from the railway company under any contract?

Mr. BALDWIN: Of that I have no knowledge, and it could not possibly come within my Department.

Mr. McNEILL: If that were so, would it not ultimately be paid by the taxpayer?

Mr. BALDWIN: That is a question which should be addressed to the Minister of Ways and Communications.

Mr. MARRIOTT: Is there such a Ministry?

Oral Answers to Questions — ORDNANCE SURVEY MAPS.

Major PRESCOTT: 37.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware of the inconvenience that is now caused to public departments connected with the transfer of lands for housing and other necessitous public purposes which is caused by the continuance of the requirement which prevailed during the War for the consent of the Controller of the Stationery Office being obtained before Ordnance Survey maps could be issued for sale or for reproduction in extract form; and whether, in order to reduce the delay, he will now issue such orders as will relax the restriction which prevailed during wartime, and thereby dispense with the necessity of obtaining the sanction of the Controller of the Stationery Office before these Ordnance maps can be reproduced?

Mr. BALDWIN: The copyright in all Government publications, including Ordnance Survey maps, is vested by His Majesty's Letters Patent in the Controller of His Majesty's Stationery Office. In
1915, at the request of the Army Council, it was laid down that all general permissions hitherto given to reproduce portions of Ordnance maps for land sale purposes should Until further notice be withdrawn. The restrictions imposed by the War Office have now been removed, and arrangements are being made for the resumption of the granting of general permissions.

Oral Answers to Questions — GOVERNMENT OFFICES (STAFFS).

ADMIRALTY.

Mr. ARNOLD: 41.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he will state the number of the staff of the Admiralty on31st May, 1919, as compared with the number on the date of the Armistice, 11thNovember, 1918?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): According to a revised Return, the total number of civilian staff, excluding messengers and charwomen, employed by the Admiralty on 11th November, 1918, was 8,312. On 31st May, 1919, the number was 7,642, a net reduction of 670. The gross reduction was 1,331, but against this must be set an increase of 661 In the Departments and branches of the Admiralty dealing with demobilisation and reconstruction problems.

MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS.

Mr. ARNOLD: 42.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions whether he will state the number of the staff of the Ministry of Munitions on the31st May, 1919, as compared with the number on the date of the Armistice, 11th November, 1918?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of MUNITIONS (Mr. James Hope): My hon. Friend proposes to deal with this matter in the course of the statement on the Munitions Estimates this afternoon.

AIR MINISTRY.

Mr. ARNOLD: 32.
asked the Undersecretary of State to the Air Ministry the number of the staff of the Air Ministry on 31st May, 1919, as compared with the number on the date of the Armistice, 11th November, 1918?

Major-General SEELY: The number of persons of all types employed in the Air
Ministry at the Armistice was 4,646 and on the 31st May 3,289. It will be understood that the large amount of work due to demobilisation has necessitated the retention of a large clerical staff.

Oral Answers to Questions — MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT (PAY).

Mr. CHARLES WHITE: 44.
asked the Prime Minister how many Members of the House of Commons are receiving pay, subsidies, or allowances from the Government in addition to their salaries as Members of Parliament?

Mr. BALDWIN: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a similar question asked by him on the 9th April last.

Mr. WHITE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the answer he refers to said nothing and does not give me an answer at all?

Mr. BALDWIN: My recollection is that it was a very satisfactory answer.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOTEL OCCUPATION (GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS).

Mr. C. WHITE: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether he will set up a Committee, consisting entirely of Members of the House of Commons, to inquire into the necessity for the staffs now in employment in Government offices and Government Departments, and also as to the necessity for the continued occupation of hotels and other buildings now being used by the War Office and other Government Departments?

Mr. SHORTT: As the matters referred to in this question are already being dealt with by the War Cabinet Committee on Government Staffs and the War Cabinet Committee on Accommodation, there appears to be no necessity to appoint another Committee as suggested.

Mr. WHITE: Who are the members of that Committee and are there any Members of Parliament upon it?

Mr. SHORTT: It is a War Cabinet Committee. I cannot give the names straight away, but I will let my hon. Friend know.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE.

RESTRICTION OF IMPORTS.

Mr. GEORGE TERRELL: 46.
asked the Prime Minister if he is now in a position to state the policy of the Government for the prevention of dumping and the protection of key industries?

Mr. SHORTT: The proposals of the Government are in course of preparation, but I am not at present in a position to make any statement on the subject.

Mr. TERRELL: Is it not a fact that the United States has now intimated its intention to withdraw from the Supreme Economic Council, and therefore this matter is one of very great urgency and importance?

Mr. SHORTT: I cannot add anything to my answer.

Mr. TERRELL: In view of the answer I have received I beg to give notice that at the conclusion of questions I shall ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House.

Mr. TERRELL: (by Private Notice) asked the President of the Board of Trade if he can state the object of his Department in holding an exhibition of a great variety of brushes of recent Japanese manufacture; whether it is for the purpose of encouraging the importation into this country of Japanese manufactures; and to whom invitations to inspect such goods have been sent?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The Department of Overseas Trade will answer this question.

Mr. TERRELL: (by Private Notice) asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in opposition to the advice which he received from the Advisory Council of Imports, he has withdrawn all restrictions against the importation of a very large number of articles of manufactured woodwork; whether there is not at present great unemployment in the wood-working trade, and whether such unemployment will not be aggravated by the action which he has taken?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: In the absence of sufficient evidence that the maintenance of restrictions on wood manufactures (other than those specially reserved for restriction) would be in the interest of the trade of the country viewed as a whole, my right hon. Friend decided that articles
of this description should be admitted freely. They consist mainly of semi-manufactures forming the raw material of further industries. This decision was taken after a careful consideration of the position, with a view to reducing the total amount of unemployment in the country.

Mr. G. TERRELL: (later): I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, "That the uncertainty as to the future economic policy of the country in the absence of definite steps for the prevention of dumping, and the protection of key industries, promised at the recent General Election, is a matter of great urgency to this country and calls for immediate action by the Government."
The pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. Speaker called on those Members who Supported the Motion to rise in their places, and not less than forty Members having accordingly risen,
The Motion stood over, under Standing Order No. 10, until a quarter-past Eight this evening.

Oral Answers to Questions — EIGHT HOURS DAY (AGRICULTURE).

Captain TERRELL: 47.
asked the Prime Minister whether in the coming legislation for the introduction of an eight hours day in certain industries of the country he proposes to include agriculture; and whether agriculture is represented on the industrial council which has been recommending the adoption of the principle?

Sir R. HORNE: I have been asked to reply to this question. It is intended to apply the Bill to agriculture in principle, though it is recognised that modifications will be necessary in regard to the method of its application, in order to meet the special needs of the industry. There was a representative of agriculture both on the employés and the workers' side of the Provisional Committee which drafted the Report on which the Bill is based.

Oral Answers to Questions — CENTRAL CONTROL BOARD (LIQUOR TRAFFIC).

Major NEWMAN: 48.
asked the Prime Minister whether the War Cabinet has now come to a decision as to the future of the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic)?

Mr. SHORTT: The answer is in the negative.

Major NEWMAN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I have had that same answer given to me for the last two or three months?

Mr. SHORTT: Yes, Sir, I believe that is so.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: In view of the admitted fact that this Board was brought into existence purely as a war staff in connection with the Ministry of Munitions and the fact that peace is said to be approaching, should it not now be automatically dissolved?

Mr. SHORTT: The matter is under the consideration of the Government.

Sir E. CARSON: Does the Government ever make up its mind and give a decision upon anything?

Mr. BILLING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the activities of this Board are causing more unrest in this country than Bolshevism?

Major NEWMAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman say what Ministry is in charge of this Board? [Hon. Members: "Answer!"]

Oral Answers to Questions — IMPERIAL CABINET.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir J. NORTON GRIFFITHS: 52.
asked the Prime Minister what is the staff of the permanent secretariat of the Imperial Cabinet?

Mr. SHORTT: There is no permanent secretariat of the Imperial War Cabinet.

Sir N. GRIFFITHS: In view of the wishes of many of our overseas self-governing Dominions, are the Government taking any steps to create such a post as indicated in my question?

Mr. SHORTT: Of course, the matter is under consideration, but there is none at present.

Sir N. GRIFFITHS: 53.
asked the Prime Minister what persons, in the absence from this country of Cabinet Ministers of the various self-governing Dominions, are authorised to attend meetings of the Imperial Cabinet on their behalf?

Mr. SHORTT: Each Dominion has the right to nominate a visiting or resident, Minister in London to be a member of the Imperial War Cabinet at meetings other than those attended by the Prime Ministers.

Oral Answers to Questions — LIVING (COST).

Mr. HOGGE: 54.
asked the Prime Minister whether the reductions in the cost of living amounting to 4s. per week in working-class budgets promised in. March for June has been realised; and, if not, what is the amount of the present-increase?

Mr. McCURDY: I have been asked to reply. The expectation held out by the Prime Minister has been fully realised. The actual reduction in the cost of living for the working-class family between 1st November, 1918, and 1st June, 1919, based on the estimate of expenditure on food made by Lord Sumner's Committee, amounts to approximately 4s. 9d. per week.

Mr. HOGGE: Has my hon. Friend consulted any working-class man?

Mr. C. WHITE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, though this works out on paper, it does not work out in the home, as I can prove?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE.

POST-WAR CONDITIONS OF SERVICE.

Mr. RAPER: 31.
asked the Under-Secretary of State to the Air Ministry if he can now make a statement as to post-war conditions of service in the Royal Air Force?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Major-General Seely): The final consideration of this question is now proceeding and will, I hope, be completed very shortly

Mr. RAPER: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware of the fact that the uncertain state of the future conditions of the Air Force prevents a large number of ex-officers of the Air Force arriving at a decision as to their future career?

Major-General SEELY: I am fully aware that it is a most urgent matter to come to a decision on this question. If my hon. and gallant Friend will put down a question in a fortnight's time I hope to be able to give him a full statement.

Oral Answers to Questions — SINKING OF GERMAN WAR VESSELS.

STATEMENT BY FIRST LORD OF ADMIRALTY.

Mr. LAMBERT: (by Private Notice) asked the First Lord of the Admiralty why precautions were not taken by the Admiralty to prevent the Germans from scuttling their warships at Scapa?

The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Long): I have received private notice of questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Commander Viscount Curzon) and other hon. Gentlemen, and I think the best plan would be for me to answer them all together. I do not think that I can add much, if anything, of import, to what has already appeared in the public Press. The Admiralty took steps as soon as this affair occurred to give the fullest possible information to the newspapers, who have availed themselves of it, and, so far as I know, all the main facts have been disclosed, but there are certain definite questions to which I will reply. Full and detailed reports of the sinking of the German ships have not yet been received at the Admiralty. Of course, I called for a report from the Commander-in-Chief, and I imagine that it is on its way.
Admiral von Reuter stated verbally that he personally had given orders for the ships to be sunk, being under the impression that the Armistice had ceased at noon on Saturday. There would have been no difficulty in the German admiral circulating these orders, since he was allowed to visit his own ships for the purpose of maintaining discipline therein, and when doing so he was conveyed in a British boat. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] It was obvious that he was not to be allowed to go in one of his own.
The present position of the ships is as follows: 10 battleships sunk, I afloat; 5 battle cruisers sunk, 5 light cruisers sunk, 3 beached; 30 destroyers sunk, 2 afloat, 18 beached.
Salvage experts are now making an examination, and until their report is received it is impossible to say whether the sunken ships can be salved, or to what extent they will interfere with the anchorage or channel.
The question of reparation for the sinking of these ships is now under consideration by the Allies in Paris.
The statement which has appeared that the crews have been changed periodically, is incorrect. Sick men, etc., had been exchanged as circumstances arose. The total numbers of the care and maintenance party had been reduced from 4,7OO to approximately 1,800.
As regards the question why precautions were not taken by the Admiralty to prevent the Germans from scuttling their ships, the answer is that this was impossible as the ships were interned, not surrendered; and the Admiralty had therefore no power to place guards upon them. It is not correct that the naval advisers of the Admiralty recommended internment; their views were clearly and definitely expressed at the time. But the decision of the heads of the Allied Governments was in favour of internment, and this has, of course, controlled the situation ever since, and made the prevention of the scuttling impossible.
I desire to deprecate, as strongly as I can, the attacks which have been made in certain quarters upon Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, for which there is not the slightest justification.

Mr. LAMBERT: May we take it then that under the terms of surrender—[HON. MEMBERS: "They were not surrendered!"]—under the terms of internment of these ships the Admiralty had no power at all to prevent the sinking of them by the German crews?

Mr. LONG: Yes, Sir, that was the effect of adopting internment instead of surrender. Had they been surrendered they would have passed into the control of the country in whose port they were interned, and that country would have been responsible, through its officers, for their safety, but, being only interned, it was the right of the Germans to have their own guards. They were responsible for the discipline and for the care of the ships, and His Majesty's Admiralty had no right whatever, even of access to the ships, except in a formal way, and no right to place guards upon them. The act of sinking is a very simple one in itself, involving only the opening of the sea cocks, and it could have been performed at any time. Consequently it was quite impossible for the Commander-in-Chief of the squadron in charge of the ships at Scapa to prevent this being done or to know that it was about to be done.

Mr. LAMBERT: May I ask whether this internment took place contrary to the advice of the naval experts expressed at the time of the Armistice?

Mr. LONG: I said in my answer that at the time this was under discussion the naval experts recommended as strongly as they could surrender and not internment, but their advice was not accepted. So far as the naval experts are concerned they are in no sense responsible for the course adopted or for what has happened.

Mr. HOGGE: Is it not the fact that since the scuttling at Scapa all the other interned German warships have been scuttled similarly?

Mr. LONG: I am not in a position to state, but it is so reported in some newspapers. The Government are unable to give any confirmation of it.

Commander BELLAIRS: May we assume that the British Government backed up with all energy the recommendation of their experts, that these ships should be surrendered, seeing that the naval admirals afloat insisted in the strongest possible terms that the ships should be surrendered, and that Marshal Foch got all that he asked for?

Mr. LONG: I regret the distinction which the hon. and gallant Member has drawn between the admirals afloat and those ashore. The advice of the admirals, whether afloat or ashore, was identical. As to the action of the Government I have said as much as I am entitled to say—that the admiral's advice was not accepted.

Sir FORTESCUE FLANNERY: Is it not the fact that if British guards had been put on board these ships that would have been regarded by the Allies as a breach of faith, and of the understanding on which they were interned in this country?

Mr. LONG: How it would have been regarded I cannot say, but it would unquestionably have been a breach of the terms of the Armistice. We acted in this matter, as I am thankful to say we have acted on every other matter in this War—we have adhered to the terms of the Armistice and we have obeyed the laws of war and the laws of humanity.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: May I ask whether or not it is the fact that the British Prime
Minister earnestly and strongly pleaded for the surrender of the ships, and that he was overruled by Mr. Wilson?

Mr. LONG: I do not think it is for me to make any statement further than that I have already made. I would respectfully ask the House not to press me at this time, speaking as I am only entitled to do for the Board of Admiralty as to what took place at that time? May I also venture respectfully to remind the House that we must bear in mind that our Allies who stood by us in this War and since have their own views and their own differences, and it is impossible to form an accurate judgment in a case like this unless you have the whole of the circumstances that led up to the discussion.

Commander BELLAIRS: In view of the position of the Admiralty, will they welcome a public inquiry by court-martial so that the whole episode may be inquired into and the responsibility for the German ships being interned set at rest?

Mr. LONG: I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman knows there is one thing necessary previously to holding a court-martial, and that is some one to try?

Commander BELLAIRS: I beg to give notice that on the Adjournment of the House to-morrow I will draw attention to the whole question.

IMPRISONMENT OF MEMBERS.

Mr. SPEAKER informed the House that he had received the following letters relating to the Imprisonment of two Members:

"Sligo County Petty Sessions Office,

Courthouse,

Sligo, 18th June, 1919.

Sir, —I beg to report that Mr. John J. Clancy, of St. Mary's Terrace, John Street, Sligo, Member of Parliament for the North Division of the County of Sligo, was charged before Captain Frederick Fitzpatrick, R.M., and John Byrne, Esq., R..M., at a Court constituted under 50 and 51 Vic., c. 20, at Sligo County Petty Sessions on the 6th day of June, 1919, for:

That on the 6th day of April, 1919, at Dromore West, in the County of Sligo, the said John J. Clancy, with divers other persons to the number of four hundred and more, did unlawfully, riotously, and routonsly assemble and gather together to the disturbance of the public peace.

Mr. Clancy was convicted of the said offence, and was ordered to be imprisoned in His Majesty's prison at Sligo for the space of three months at hard labour, said term of imprison-
ment to commence at the expiration of any other term of imprisonment to which he was previously sentenced by the Court.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

ANTHONY BURKE,

Clerk of Sligo County Petty Sessions.

The Right Hon. J. W. Lowther, P.C.

Speaker of the House of Commons,

House of Commons,

London."

"Weston,

Mallow,

County Cork.

17th June, 1919.

Sir,—I beg to inform you that at a Court of Summary Jurisdiction under the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, held here today, Countess Marckievitz, M.P. for Dublin City, was convicted before Mr. J. M. Dickson. Resident Magistrate, and myself of taking part in an unlawful assembly at Newmarket, in this county, on the 17th ultimo, and sentenced to be imprisoned for four calendar months in Cork female prison.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

J. A. HARDY,

Resident Magistrate.

The Right Hon. The Speaker,

House of Commons."

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Sir DONALD MACLEAN: May I ask what business the Government propose to take to-morrow?

Mr. SHORTT: To-morrow it is proposed to take the Acquisition of Land Bill and the Money Resolution for the Electricity (Supply) Bill. It is proposed also to ask the House to suspend the Standing Orders, for the purpose of getting those two Orders.
On Thursday, the Post Office Vote will be taken.

Sir D. MACLEAN: Is the Eleven o'Clock Rule to be suspended, in order to get the Land Acquisition Bill through, as well as the Money Resolution?

Mr. SHORTT: Yes.

Sir J. BUTCHER: When will the Committee stage of the Aliens Restriction Bill be taken?

Mr. SHORTT: I cannot say.

Sir H. DALZIEL: Can the right hon. Gentleman give any indication when the Peace terms will be in the hands of Members?

Mr. SHORTT: I cannot say at the moment.

Sir H. DALZIEL: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an answer to-morrow?

Mr. SHORTT: I will try.

Mr. BILLING: Is it proposed that any discussion shall take place on the Peace terms after they are laid on the Table?

Mr. SHORTT: No doubt there will be.

Colonel GREIG: When will the Ministry of Ways and Communications Bill be taken?

Mr. SHORTT: We may take that next week.

Mr. BOWERMAN: As many of my colleagues who are interested in the Post Office Vote cannot be here this week, can the right hon. Gentleman see his way not to take that Vote on Thursday?

Mr. SHORTT: I understand that my right hon. Friend and those who act with him only asked that the Home Office Vote should not be taken, and suggested that anything else might be taken. As it has been arranged to take the Post Office Vote, I am afraid it is too late to alter it now.

Ordered,
That the Civil Services Estimates, 1919–20, Ministry of Munitions Vote, be considered in Committee of Supply."—[Mr. Shortt,]

NAVY (EXCESSES), 1917–18.

Copy presented, of Statement of the Sum required to be voted in order to make good Excesses of Navy Expenditure beyond the Grants for the year ended 31st March, 1918 [by Command]; referred to a Standing Committee, and to be printed. [No. 124]

BILL PRESENTED.

AGRICULTURAL LAND SALES (RESTRICTION OF NOTICES TO QUIT) BILL,—"to amend the Law as to notices to quit given to tenants by owners of agricultural land prior to the sale of such land," presented by Mr. CAUTLEY; supported by Captain Fitzroy and Major Wheler; to be read a second time upon Tuesday next; and to be printed. [Bill 108.]

MERCHANT SHIPPING (WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY) BILL [Lords],

Read the first time; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 106.]

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES (LEATHER MEASUREMENT) BILL [Lords],

Read the first time; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 107.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY.— [13th ALLOTTED DAY.]

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]

Orders of the Day — MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS.

MR. KELLAWAY'S STATEMENT.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £900, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Ministry of Munitions." — [Note. — £100 has been voted on account.]

The DEPUTY-MINISTER of MUNITIONS (Mr. Kellaway): I have to ask the approval of the Committee for an expenditure for the year ending 31st March, 1920, of £185,000,000. If this figure of £185,000,000 were likely to be a permanent figure for any Department similar to that which I now represent, it would be an exceedingly depressing one, but out of that total of £185,000,000, £99,000,000 is a war charge in respect of the liquidation of contracts which were running at the time of the Armistice. The balance of £86,000,000 is for supplies to other Government Departments. The Committee will notice that they are asked to approve a Vote of £1,000 against that expenditure of £185,000,000. The £1,000 is a Token Vote to cover estimated deficiencies in our receipts in the form of Appropriations-in-Aid. The expenditure of £185,000,000 is estimated to be made up as to £86,000,000 by payments from other Government Departments for supplies provided for them by the Ministry, £7,000,000 by repayments by contractors of advances made to them, £16,000,000 will be payments from the Allies for munitions supplied during the War, and £76,000,000 will be the estimated proceeds of the sales of surplus stores by the Ministry during the coming year. I know that there has been a good deal of comment in various quarters on the policy of Appropriations-in-Aid and particularly in regard to the policy of the Government in using this £76,000,000, which it is estimated the Ministry will secure during the current year from the sale of surplus stores, as Appropriations-in-Aid of this expenditure. That is a point of view with which per-
sonally I have a good deal of sympathy. I was examined on this question by the Committee on National Expenditure, and there stated that from the point of view of the convenience of the Department we should have no objection, and that it would be a considerable advantage if, instead of using this money as Appropriations-in-Aid of our expenditure, we had to come to Parliament for a Vote of money to cover the whole of our expenditure. But the Committee will see that this question cannot be dealt with from the point of view of the convenience of any one Department. It is quite clearly a question which is to be controlled by the financial policy of the year, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his annual statement, gave the reason why it was desirable that the proceeds of the sales of surplus stores should be used as Appropriations-in-Aid of the expenditure of the Department responsible for carrying out those operations.
4.0 p.m.
That is all I need say at the moment in regard to the general figures of the expenditure and income during the coming year. But this is the first time that a Minister representing the Department for which I am now speaking has been in a position to speak with complete frankness and without making statements which would, in earlier circumstances, have been prejudicial to the public interest. That has some drawbacks. It is no longer possible for a Minister to escape the embarrassments of his office by pleading the public interest as being prejudiced by frankness. But there is a great advantage in our now being able to give information and figures to the Committee which could not have been given before to-day. There is a grim appropriateness in the fact that to-day, on the morrow of the decision of the Central Powers to sign the Treaty of Peace, this Committee is considering this Vote. That Treaty crowns the efforts of the British soldier. It was his blood that was shed; it was his sacrifice that was made. The triumph of right expressed in that Treaty is the triumph of the British soldier. Many classes of the community helped him to win it, but it wa3 his triumph, it was his effort. Yet I am sure that the British soldier and all those who knew him in France, and who have known him since his return here will agree, would be the first to admit, that without the work of the munition industries of this country his valour would have been spent in vain against the rock of the German armament. More I do not claim
for the Ministry of Munitions, but this I do claim that, finding the British soldier without proper equipment, without sufficient or efficient weapons either for offence or for defence, we were able to provide him with weapons which, in their abundance, their ingenuity, and their effectiveness, made him the best equipped of any soldier in the field. We shall not be able to do justice to the full measure of the British soldier's triumph unless in this memorable hour we remember the odds against which he had to fight in the early days of the War. In order that that great work of putting the British soldier on an equality and in the end superior to his opponents in his equipment might be done, this country poured out money like water. The total expenditure of the Ministry of Munitions from its establishment up to the end of the last financial year was £1,834,000,000. Adding the £99,000,000, which is a war item in the figures I have given for the current year, and such items as will remain after that period, it is certain that the figure of the charge this country will have had to bear for the equipment of its Armies will not be short of £2,000,000,000. I think the Committee and the country arc entitled to know whether they got full value for that vast expenditure, and it is impossible to give the evidence which, in my view, justifies that great claim without recalling the position in which the British Army was placed during the first nine months of the War.
When the Army settled down to trench warfare they were practically without equipment for that form of warfare. They were without grenades, without mortars, without bombs, and without an adequate supply of high explosive shells. With the resource which has always distinguished the British soldier he set to work trying to provide his own equipment. Having no proper trench warfare weapons, he improvised grenades out of bully beef tins and jam tins, and in workshops erected in the field he carried on experiments with high explosive hand grenades, trench mortar bombs, and trench mortars. At the beginning of the War and for some time after its commencement this country was without a light trench mortar. No manufacturing capacity had been developed. There was no reserve, and it was a civilian engineer, Mr. Wilfrid Stokes, who saved
the situation. The Stokes mortar, which in the end was the most perfect of the light mortars in the field, was first brought forward in January, 1915, and submitted to the authorities by Mr. Gwynne, of the "Morning Post." It was taken up by the Ministry of Munitions immediately it was established, and in August, 1915, the present Prime Minister ordered 1,000 of that weapon. So short was the Army in France of proper equipment with which to compete against the highly organised and scientific armaments of Germany for trench warfare that we had to supply our men with catapults, and no fewer than 3,000 catapults had to be sent out in the early months of the war, with which our soldiers—our flesh and blood—did their best, and did it magnificently, and in a manner in which no country had a right to ask its flesh and blood to defend itself against the armaments of Germany. I cannot pass from this introductory part of my speech without dwelling for a moment on that heroic figure—the most tragic figure in the whole history of this War—of the British soldier, without equipment, fighting a highly organised and magnificently equipped enemy, doing his best to improvise his own weapons, using catapults and hand grenades made of bully beef tins and jam tins. There is no more tragic figure in the whole history of war. The men who trod that Calvary have nothing to learn of physical suffering or of bitterness of spirit.
We pass through the long months of trench warfare to June, 1915, when the Ministry of Munitions had its official birth in the Act of Parliament which was then passed. But it was not the Act of Parliament that made the Ministry of Munitions. The Ministry of Munitions was made by the shambles of Festubert. The experience of that battle brought home to the most stubborn supporter of the old methods that the time had come for new men and new methods. How much blood would have been saved, how fewer British graves there would be in France to-day if the decision taken after Festubert had been taken at the date when the shortage of ammunition was known to all who had access to official documents! I sometimes hear the expression, "Shell shortage controversy." There is no controversy. What informed man ever disputes the fact that there was a shortage? It is impossible for any informed man, or for any man who spoke to a soldier who came back from the early months of the
War, to question the shortage. It was not Colonel Repington's article in the newspaper. He might have published a hundred articles, and politicians might have intrigued in vain for a century, and nothing would have happened if the facts had not been as grim and as grisly as they were. And no adequate steps were taken to remedy that shortage until the time when the necessary powers were given in the Ministry of Munitions Act and in the Defence of the Realm Act. The fault does not rest with the men in the War Office who were trying to solve an impossible problem. They had not the power. They did wonders, having regard to the situation with which they were faced. But the dominating factor of that time, which made the solution of the problem impossible, was that there was professed in high places a heresy which was expressed in the phrase, "Business as usual." If that heresy had continued, there would have been no business for this country. Within the limits of their powers the War Office men did wonders. They ordered shells by the million. Orders for over thirty million shells were placed by the Armaments Committee of the War Office, but they had no power to see that the shells were converted into ammunition which could be fired out of a gun.
I have heard a good deal about these old War Office orders. What the man in France, who was limited to four rounds a day, wanted was not an order—something written on a scrap of paper. He wanted something he could fire out of a gun. These famous orders recall to me that famous Barmecide feast where the host ordered practically everything which his vivid imagination could suggest, but which never materialised into anything which his guest was able to eat. It was only when the powers given in the first Munitions Act and in the Defence of the Realm Regulations were used by the first Minister of Munitions to control the supply of machine tools, the importation of raw material, to erect great new factories, to bring women into the munition factories as was done by the hundred thousand, to control profits, to regulate wages, to remove trade union restrictions—it was only then that it was possible properly to grapple with this problem. We have no right to criticise men who failed in the task which was set them, not from any want of will or knowledge, but because the problem was not
properly understood at the top and because they were not given powers by which it could be carried out. The first task that fell to the Ministry of Munitions was to bring these great War Office orders into fruition, to see that the figures which were written on pieces of paper were converted into something that the gunner could fire from his gun. The Prime Minister's first task was to find out what was holding up the delivery of these orders. Out of a hundred shells which had been ordered only fifteen were forthcoming at the date on which they were promised for delivery. It was found that the hold-up was principally due to lack of component parts. A shell without a primer or a T tube or a fuse is about as useful as a motor car without an engine or a carburettor or a magneto. The component manufacturers were brought together. Men expert in the business of munition production interviewed them and it was found one man had anvils and no bodies and another had bodies and no anvils. The simple measure was taken of bringing the bodies and the anvils together. I give that as a typical instance of the detailed measures, far-reaching in their effect, by which this component problem was solved. By heroic measures on the one hand and detailed measures on the other, these great Pre-Ministry of Munitions orders were converted into real ammunition.
The total output of shells before the War was about 55,000 rounds per annum. From that figure we built up a total production, between the outbreak of war and the date of the Armistice, of over 200,000,000 rounds. The number of guns with the Army at the outbreak of the War was 476. The total production of guns during the War was 26,430, plus 9,170 which were repaired. Up to June, 1915, there had been accepted by the War Office for delivery to the Army 1,486 machine guns. The total production up to December of last year was 250,000, and if the War had continued our production to-day would be 4,000 machine guns per week. The figures for the development and increase of motor transport have been similarly striking. The Ministry only became responsible for motor transport in August, 1916, and no figures are available of the output before that time. The output for the September quarter of 1916 was 1,910 motor vehicles of all kinds. The total output from September, 1916, to December of last year was 100,626. At the
outbreak of War the British Army had in its possession about 100 aeroplanes. The Ministry became responsible for aeroplane production on 12th September, 1917, when the production had increaed to 500 aeroplanes per month. At the date of the Armistice, that is to say a period of little more than eighteen months, production had been increased to 4,000 per month. I should like to have dwelt on that figure and what it means. There is a very romantic story behind these figures of aeroplane production. At a time when raw material and machinery was very largely engaged on other essential war production this country was able, thanks to the ingenuity of its craftsmen and the farsightedness of its captains of industry, to make a great step forward in its aircraft production. The improvement in the fighting quality and the safety of the machines was just as great as the increase in the numbers. I think there is no question amongst informed men that during the latter stages of the War this country held the supremacy over her enemy in the air. That was due not only to the extraordinary fighting spirit and ingenuity of the men who flew and fought the machines, but also to the ingenuity and patriotism of the craftsmen and the employers engaged in that great industry.
I pass from that to bring the mind of the Committee to a period last year when the organisation of the Ministry was tested from top to bottom. I should like those men, most of them well-meaning and well-informed men, who from time to time criticise defects in the administration of the Ministry to realise the significance of this fact. In April last year the great German offensive was made. In the course of that short offensive our Armies in France lost either by capture or destruction 1,000 guns, 70,000 tons of munitions, or about 15 per cent. of our total stocks in France, 4,000 machine guns, 200,000 rifles, 250,000 rounds of small arms ammunitions, 700 trench mortars and 200 tanks. I doubt if any Army in the course of this War suffered more devastating losses of material. At the time when the news began to come in my hon. Friends opposite will remember that there was a good deal of industrial trouble in this country, and those of us who were responsible for Labour policy in the Ministry viewed with a good deal of apprehension the situation as it then existed. But as soon as it became known in the workshops of this
country that the British soldier had suffered these losses in material, and that he was fighting with his back to the wall in defence of the Channel Ports and of our homes, all the disunion in the ranks of labour was swept away like mist before the summer sun. It was a magnificent rally which the labour men of this country made in support of those who were shedding their blood on their behalf across the Channel. The organisation made it possible for these great losses to be borne and to be replaced within a fortnight. Indeed, not only to replace every gun, every machine gun, every tank, every trench mortar, every round of ammunition, but to replace them, in many cases with a superior weapon. That was particularly true in regard to the tanks. The 700 tanks that were lost were all replaced with a quicker and more effective weapon. These are the particulars of the great lossss in April and of the way that they were made up.
From April of last year let the mind of the Committee proceed to August of last year, when the British offensive began—one of the most dramatic changes of fortune in the whole history of the War. The organisation that had had to make up the great deficiencies due to losses of equipment in April was able to supply the Array so that in August, 1918, in one week there was expended 2,900.000 rounds of ammunition or a weight of 80,000 tons, whilst in the culminating period of October last, the biggest week of the offensive, we expended 3,500,000 rounds of gun ammunition, not small arms ammunition, equal to 85,000 tons weight. On the day that the British Army broke through the Hindenburg line they fired 943,000 shells of a weight of 40,000 tons. A greater number of shells were fired in the twenty-four hours' bombardment that preceded the breaking of the Hindenbung line than we fired during the whole four years of the South African war. If we take the pre-war output of the country as 55,000 shells per annum, our guns were firing every eighty minutes a number of shells equal to the total annual output of this country before the War. I think the organisation and the industry that was capable of producing results such as these need have no fear of the judgment that history will pass upon its operations. I am sorry to have to inflict upon the Committee masses of statistics of this kind, but it would have been impossible in any other way within
the compass of time that I can expect the Committee to allow me to convey to them the magnitude of the work carried on.
As an accompaniment, and a necessary accompaniment, to the magnitude of the work there have been revealed faults of administration and extravagance here and there. Some of these instances have recently had public attention concentrated upon them in connection with the Comptroller and Auditor-General's Report. I want now to make a reference, not to the Report itself, but to the comments made upon that Report. That Report, if properly considered as a whole, has been completely misrepresented by the comments which have appeared and which have been made in public speeches. I should be rendering a poor service to the Department for which I am speaking, and to the eminent men whose administration it falls to me to defend, if I were to say a single word of reflection on the way in which the Comptroller and Auditor-General has discharged his duty. He is a great officer of this House, one of the most potent instruments by which this House exercises its ancient duty of checking the expenditure of public departments; but he is a critic. By the Statute under which he is set up he is a great critic and not a judge, and the Committee will find if they examine his Report that he has not gone beyond that view of his function. The House has provided that when the Comptroller and Auditor-General's Report is submitted to the House it shall go forthwith to the Public Accounts Committee, and it is for the Public Accounts Committee to examine the statement of facts to which the Comptroller and Auditor-General has directed their attention, and to make such recommendations for action as they think fit.
In my view a serious injustice has been done to the Comptroller and Auditor-General by some of the comments which have appeared in the Press and which have suggested that he has gone outside his duty. Parliament would, I am certain, never submit to the action of an officer who acted in the way in which certain newspapers have suggested the Comptroller and Auditor-General has acted. He has done nothing more than carry out his duty under the Statute, which is to direct the attention of Parliament to certain things on which he pronounces no final judgment. A grave injustice has
also been done to the men in the Ministry who have been working with great skill and great efficiency, many of them as volunteers, by the pretended summaries of the Report which have been used in many quarters. It would have been thought from what some wild-headed writers have said that the Comptroller and Auditor-General had described the Ministry of Munitions as a wild spendthrift Department, where there was no control over expenditure, and where the contractors simply walked in and found a thieves' kitchen, if I may quote the elegant language used by one of those who has been associated with it in the past, but who found it impossible to continue his association with the Department. I am speaking of the comments which have-appeared in some of the wilder newspapers.
What are the facts about the Report? In the second Clause of his Report the Auditor-General makes this remark.
The cases stated—
These are the cases on which criticism is passed:
are brought to notice, generally us presenting special features of interest or importance, but it may be stated that they are extremely few in comparison with the vast number of transactions negotiated by the Ministry and that the sums involved are small in relation to its-turnover.
It is not surprising with an annual turnover of £2,000,000,000, with contracts, numbering many thousands, and with the contracts being worked under war conditions, to find examples of extravagance here or there. The Comptroller and Auditor-General goes on to say:
A very favourable influence on the accounts has been effected by the introduction of a scheme of reform.… They were undoubtedly far-reaching and effective and the results appear to have been very good.
I will not spend time on the compliments which the Comptroller and Auditor-General passed on the Ministry in which he referred to the efficiency of the Ministry and the effort to remedy defects. Notwithstanding these tributes, the work of the Ministry was referred to in many newspapers, and those not usually the sensational ones, as "waste and muddle," varied with such headlines as "Muddle and Waste." The organ which represents that party, which believes that the people ought to manage everything for themselves, declared that this example of the people managing things for themselves
meant that millions of money were being poured down the sink. I think I could make up headlines which would more accurately reflect the real character of the Comptroller and Auditor-General's Report than the headlines which have appeared in the newspapers. My headlines would be "Ministry of Munitions' Finance—Great Public Official's Tribute to efficiency of the reforms that have been carried out—How profiteering has been checked—Hundreds of millions of money saved to the taxpayer." I admit that these are headlines I am suggesting, but I claim that they would more accurately represent the true nature and intent of the Comptroller and Auditor-General's Report than the comments to which I have referred.
The criticisms so far as they are well founded are concerned particularly with experimental supplies. I am sure the Committee will see that in regard to experimental supplies it is impossible to have the same strict control as you have in regard to standardised supplies. Many of these experimental supplies had never been made in this country; they were absolutely foreign to our industrial practice. They included such things as poison gas, anti-aircraft bullets and tanks. Here were three munitions, each of which had a great effect on the fortunes of war and in regard to which production had to be going on at the same time that experiments and research were going on. You had these two parallel processes of production in great quantity on the one side and experiment and research on the other. In these circumstances is it not obviously inevitable that some of the earlier contracts that you placed for your experimental supplies would have to be scrapped and improved munitions ordered in their place? That is exactly what took place in regard to these particular munitions about which there has been some criticism. It is all very well now, when the experience of the War has passed away, to turn round and denounce some of the men who were giving up their time in the Ministry—and more than one of whom gave up his life in the Ministry—to develop these new weapons of warfare.
Let me take two examples. I have here sections of bullets which stopped the German air-raids on this country. There are six of them, from the first crude bullet, indistinguishable from the bullet that the
infantryman fired out of his rifle, up to this one which to the ordinary layman does not differ on casual examination from the first, but that bullet used only once, on Whitsunday of last year, prevented any further air-raids on this country. Were we right to scrap the earlier bullets when we found a better one? Were we not right to stop the contract for the earlier bullet and to pay compensation to the contractors? I would not have liked to have been the Minister to stand up in this House on one of those nights when London was being raided, and when questioned as to whether we had not a bullet to stop the raids, to have said, "Yes, it is true, but the contractor is engaged turning out the earlier form of bullet, and we must not turn them off that in order to make the new bullets, otherwise the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the Public Accounts Committee and the Press will denounce the Department as being wasteful muddlers."
I remember standing in my garden at Blackheath—I think it was on the occasion of the first raid—watching a Zeppelin which was hovering over Woolwich Arsenal and apparently dropping its bombs with complete impunity. Our poor little anti-aircraft guns did not get within miles of their objective; they could not fire more than two miles in those days. We have now anti-aircraft guns which can fire effectively at objects five miles in the air. I watched that Zeppelin, and I do not think that I ever had a greater sense of humiliation than when I thought that it was possible for Germany to attack the very heart of this Empire to do its best—and it did a great deal—to check the moral of our people, and interfere with production, without our being able effectively to reply.
When the Zeppelin raids were stopped as they were, by the heroism of our airmen, and the engines of defence which we were able to provide, a new problem presented itself, because the bullet that had been effective against the Zeppelins was not so effective against the heavier than air machines, and our men had to go on with their experimentations, trying to devise a bullet which would be equally effective. As the Committee knows, that bullet was found, and during the later months of the War we had not the dread of air raids. But if you are going to put it on the ground of money alone, and consider the loss of money on these contracts on the one hand, surely you ought to compare it
with what would have been the loss if those raids had gone unchecked. On the day after Whit Sunday last year it was known that Germany had prepared for air raids on this country, by heavier than air machines, greater in magnitude than had ever been attempted before. Why did they not come? They did not come because the reception that their airmen got that Sunday night made it impossible to get men to face such risks. On the mere ground of money alone, if that ground is taken, then on these contracts the Department can claim to have acted justly and properly. Very much the same applies to the contracts for poison gas. There has been some rather acid comment on the fact that contracts were placed for poison gas that did not realise all our expectations. We never reached a perfect gas. Contract after contract was placed when experimentation had satisfied our experts that they had got the best that was possible in the circumstances. Were we to have waited before replying to the German gas attack at Ypres until we got a perfect gas, or were we to proceed to put into the hands of our men the best weapons that were available? Whatever some jaundiced critics may say about some of those contracts, the British soldier will salute the men of the Chemical Warfare Department of the Ministry of Munitions who in cold blood risked their lives in connection with the experiments which they undertook to start this war industry, with the result that we were able in the ten months of 1918 to send out to France 15,000 tons of gas for use against the Germans. Although I do not think that we ever succeeded in improving on the effectiveness of the German gas, we certainly were equal to it, while on the defensive side of gas warfare the Chemical Warfare Department of the Ministry succeeded in providing a defence that undoubtedly made our gas mask the best of any of the fighting forces. We were never taken by surprise by the Germans. However novel the form of gas which they were using, it had always been anticipated by the chemists of the Ministry of Munitions and by the manufacturerers who were advising them. Our men were never surprised by any form of gas that was used.
In making that defence for these contracts for experimental supplies which have been so sharply criticised, I do not
want it to be supposed that I am claiming that this tolerance should extend throughout the whole range of the contracts of the Ministry. It would be intolerable if I attempted any such defence. In regard to standard purchases, the Ministry has got to satisfy Parliament that it exercised such control as were possible in war conditions. But I do make this claim on behalf of the Ministry, that it was the first Government Department to set up an effective system by which contracts charged against the Government were checked. It was under the auspices of the Ministry that that great reform, the costing system, was introduced. Some such reform was obviously necessary. The Government had to buy everything the contractors could produce. You had not the ordinary limitation of supply and demand on ordinary human rapacity—whatever could be produced, that the Government required for the use of their soldiers. In those circumstances some extraordinary method was necessary of checking the ordinary rapacity of the ordinary human being. And my right hon. Friend (Dr. Addison), now President of the Local Government Board, with the approval of the Prime Minister, brought in Sir Hardman Lever and Sir John Mann into the Ministry to undertake this work of setting up a sys-tam of ascertaining the cost of production and basing the prices the contractors were-allowed to charge on those costs. Committees of this House have more than once been directed to the effectiveness of that work, and I am glad to say that that system has now been adopted by most of the other great purchasing Departments. The saving as the result of this system of costing has amounted to £300,000,000. I will give the Committee three or four examples of cases in which they were able to cut down the contractor's charges by applying costing to the production and insisting on purchases being charged for at what were reasonable prices. Rifles fell from £4 1s. to £3 8s. And as rifles were ordered by the million, the Committee will see the significance of that. The Vickers type of machine gun, which was costing £112 when the Ministry took over, was reduced to £80 at the time of the Armistice. The Lewis gun, of which the price was £165, was brought down to £62: there was a saving on this gun alone of nearly £10,000,000. The eighteen-pounder shell, of which 85,000.000 rounds were purchased, came down in price from
£l 2s. 6d. to 12s. At a time like this it is just as well that this sort of matter, to which the attention of the public is not usually directed, should be brought home to the mind of the Committee of this House. It is my own personal view that a costing system has got to play a prominent part in the future in this country. There is a great deal of discussion going on as to the means by which profiteering in the necessaries of life may be checked, and I think it well that members of the Committee should direct their attention to the possibility of making a discreet use of a system of ascertaining costs and of using that system in connection with the solution of that difficult problem.
Now I come to the position at the date of the Armistice. Our work had not finished at the date of the Armistice. We had then reached the highest pitch of production. Our mills, factories, and foundries were all working at the highest possible pressure. In war you cannot afford to take risks. Over-insurance is better than under-insurance. There were very few men in this country who thought that the War would end so soon. I was one of the few who ventured to express a sanguine opinion last year, but I was not sanguine enough to suppose that the fighting would be over by the 11th of November, and the best way of ensuring that the war would be over soon was to continue producing as if you were certain that it would last a long time. It was on that principle that production was kept up to the very highest pitch up to the time of the Armistice. Then came the question of liquidating these contracts, and I can quite understand some members of the Committee wondering why this work has not yet been finished. There is a saying that it is much easier to scramble eggs than to unscramble them. That applies with point to the question of liquidating these contracts. It is much easier to make your contracts than to liquidate them on fair terms. If you are prepared to sacrifice values in order to get an immediate settlement, then you may hurry. But if the taxpayers of this country are to get fair terms in connection with the liquidation of these contracts then it is necessary that the work be done by skilled men and in due form. At the time of the Armistice the number of contracts was 34,359, representing a value of £329,415,000. Up to the 31st of May this year there were remaining un-
liquidated 7,344 contracts, representing a value of £102,000,000, but of that number there were intended to be completed 5,290 contracts, representing a value of £31,900,000. Having regard to all the circumstances, I believe that the work done by Sir Gilbert Garnsey in connection with these contracts has been a magnificently effective piece of work.
That was one new task which the Ministry had to undertake at the time of the Armistice. I come now to another which bulks much more largely in the public mind. I refer to the question of disposals. Having been the largest manufacturing concern in the world, the Ministry of Munitions has now become the greatest selling organisation in the world. It is only a little over four months since my Noble Friend Lord Inverforth was made Minister of Munitions; the exact date was 11th January, and the first task which he had to face, which was imposed on the Ministry by the War Cabinet, was the disposal of all property and stores surplus to the requirements of various Government Departments. The danger attached to this work will be vividly in the minds of those who recall what took place in connection with the realisation of stores after the South African War. That was a comparatively small operation in comparison with the operation for which the Ministry of Munitions has now been made responsible, of disposing of all the vast stores, scattered over several continents, and of every possible variety, in conditions of-great difficulty, with questions continually cropping up which, if wrongly solved, might cause international complications. Lord Inverforth, in order to have thiswork carried out, set up, under the Ministry, the Surplus Government Property Disposal Board, of which he appointed me chairman. The Board is composed, with two exceptions, I think, exclusively of business men. And here, if it is not out of place for a junior Minister to pay compliments to his chief, I think I might acknowledge the extraordinary success with which the present Minister has succeeded in getting round him business men who, without hope of fee or reward, have given their services and their experience for the benefit of their country. These men are men who if they stuck to their own businesses would, I suppose, be earning incomes running into five figures. But thev are content to serve on that Board in order to help the taxpayers of this country to recover a fair return, or such return
as is possible, for the great expenditure made on war material. The Board proceeded to divide up the work of these selling operations into a number of different branches, and to put every section of the work into the hands of a business man whoso business it had been throughout his life to deal in that particular type of goods.
I might say that my chairmanship is nut merely nominal, for meetings are held every day. I have discovered that there are some inconveniences in a politician having to preside over a committee composed almost exclusively of business men. They express themselves to me in regard to politicians with a frankness which I admire, and from which I hope I profit. These men have been in the habit of carrying on their work in their own way, without being responsible to anybody. They have told this man to go and do that, and he has done it; there has been no fear of public criticism. Now they come into a new world, where every action may have to come before this House and Committee for justification, and where the searchlight of the Press is directed upon their operations. Occasionally—it has been only a passing phase of irritability—they have said that if this sort of thing is to go on Parliament can do the work itself. I am glad it has been only a passing phase of irritability; they have recognised that, in regard to matters in which public money, and interests are involved, they cannot have the same absence of criticism or the same right of individual decision as they have in regard to ordinary business operations. I am sure that the House-will wish to join with me in expressing its sense of gratitude to these volunteers on the Board for the readiness, and I think for the success, with which they have carried on the work of the Board. Perhaps my view is coloured, but I am glad to say that it has been supported by the Committee on National Expenditure in its latest report. I hope I have not lost the quotation, it is one of the most precious things I have. It made only one reference to the subject, and. it was to this effect—that in their opinion the securing of proper prices for surplus stores and the work generally are being efficiently done. The Committee will wish to know how much money the country is likely to get from the sale of these surplus stores. The total realised to date is £130,000,000. Of that total £63,000,000 is the proceeds of surplus
stores proper, and the balance the proceeds of trading accounts. It is necessary to make that distinction because although the whole of these sales are conducted with the cognisance of the Board, it is only the proceeds of the surplus stores proper that can be used as Appropriations-in-Aid. In regard to trading accounts the Exchequer benefits only by any profit that remains on particular operations, that is to say, by the difference between the price at which the goods were bought and the price they realised.
Much public interest has been shown in regard to our sales of motor transport. I remember there were some suggestions made at an earlier stage that we were such innocents on the Board that we allowed the profiteer and the dealer to get hold of public property at merely nominal prices and to dispose of it at an enormous profit. The story now is rather different. We are no longer accused of being such innocent creatures now, we are nothing but profiteers. It is as profiteers that those of us who are trying to realise this property of the taxpayer are now being denounced. There has been a good deal of criticism, especially in a section of the Press, because, having commandeered a Rolls-Royce car for £ 1,300 within the last few weeks the man from whom it was taken, wanting to have it back again, was asked to pay £2,600, that being the market price. He did not like to pay £2,600 for a car he had sold for £l,300. I confess it does seem on the surface a somewhat hard case, and there might be some grounds for a charge of profiteering. But the fair market price was paid to that man when the car was bought. He never questioned the price, and agreed that we paid the full price. If the market value of the car had gone down to £300, would the seller have been willing to buy it back at the price for which he sold it? In carrying on the disposal of this property the Board intends to secure the highest price it can obtain for the taxpayers. The total sales for motor transport up to date have been £1,108,000. During the past three weeks we have realised £651,000, so that the rate of sale is being gradually accelerated. I would like to say a word about Kempton Park. It has been the object of a good deal of good-natured comment, and some that is not good-natured. As to the past I know nothing, and have no responsibility. Kempton
Park was handed over to the Ministry of Munitions by the War Department on the 28th May, a little more than three weeks ago. On the morning of the 29th May, 160 men were engaged in removing the vehicles, and to-day approximately 650 men are so employed. In the fifteen and a half working days from 29th May to 17th June, the total number of vehicles removed from Kempton Park and sent to the Agricultural Hall and to various provincial centres for sale, and to Slough for repair, was 2,852 lorries, 285 motor-cars, 4,104 motor cycles. In addition to these, the following vehicles were placed on the hard road ready for immediate removal: 1,700 lorries, 2,500 cars, 3,000 motor cycles. I shall not venture to give the Committee a date as to when Kempton Park will be completely evacuated, but the Disposal Board having gone in on 28th May, I think it will be admitted that the man in charge has succeeded in effecting a pretty good hustle.
I would like before I leave that subject to say a word in regard to Slough. It was handed over to the Ministry early in May —I think it was on the 2nd or the 3rd. As I have shown, we have removed from Kempton to Slough a very large number of vehicles. I am not going to say anything about the question, which is now the subject of inquiry by a Joint Committee, but this it is right I should say, that I know no other place in the country where these cars could have been repaired in the numbers or in the time I have indicated. We have put at the head of the work there one of the keenest motor engineers in this country. It is a refreshing experience to talk to him. I am sure the taxpayers, at any rate, will be gratified to know that, whatever may be the decision of the Committee as to what happened in the past, at the present time this great engineering depot is serving a very important function in the State. Motor transport is only in its infancy in this country. If we had them available we could do to-day with hundreds and thousands of more motor lorries, if only to clear the ports, which are being congested because we have not facilities for unloading vessels and getting stuff away. This country will have to use, in connection with its national organisation, motor transports on a scale it has never dreamed of before. And, whatever view may be taken as to the best policy for Slough, I am certain that in some form or another it is neces-
sary that there should be in this country a repairing depot on a very large scale indeed.
5.0 P.M.
I have so far dealt only with the particular case of motor vehicles. Now I come to a question which has attracted a good deal of public attention in the course of the past few days—the linen deal. I am a fairly close student of the Press. An old pressman, 1 still take art interest in watching the operations, the gyrations sometimes, of some of my successors on the Press, and I notice this remarkable thing about the Press and the linen deal. When they first made the discovery that we had decided to sell this linen for £4,000,000 to one man, the news occupied the front page. It was the subject of pictures, and of magnificent headlines. Gradually there has been a diminuendo, a note of quieting down, until now you have to search for it somewhere on the back page to find some little paragraph where it is just admitted that perhaps, after all, the Government has not made such a very bad bargain. They made the discovery very soon, some of these headstrong critics, that they were barking up the wrong tree; and now they are pretending that they were not barking at all but only exercising their voices. I am prepared before any assembly of business men to take the details of this linen transaction from the beginning to-the moment of the decision of sale to Mr. Martin and to justify it, and I have no fear of the result. What was the situation when the Ministry took over the responsibility for the production of aircraft in 1917? The output of linen was 70,000 yards a month. We then had to embark on an enormously enhanced programme of aeroplane construction, and that programme was one of the most vital factors in the success of our country in the War. We raised our output between February, 1917, and the date of the Armistice from 70,000 yards to 7,000,000 yards per month, and the result was that at the Armistice we had on our hands commitments for 43,000,000 yards of linen for which we had paid 1s. 3d. to 4s. a yard. That price-was a price far in excess of the pre-war price. It was necessarily in excess. I am not making any criticism of the linen manufacturers of Belfast for that increase. The increase was very largely due to the Bolsheviks. They stopped the export of flax, and the Government had to take drastic and expensive measures in order to develop the production of flax. The result
was that the price of linen bounded up and we were paying from 1s. 3d. to 4s. a yard for it. The obvious thing to do, finding ourselves with all this linen on our hands, was to try to get it back into the hands of the traders. They understood the business, they knew the details of organisation by which it might be distributed. If it had been possible to come to terms with linen manufacturers that is the course which would have been taken, but, as is often the case in these matters, they took one view of what was the value at which they ought to buy it back, and we took another view. They offered to take this 43,000,000 yards of linen at 1s. per yard, and they were not prepared to go beyond that price. They came forward with a subsequent offer to join with the Disposal Board in selling the linen on a profit-sharing basis.

Sir C. HENRY: A syndicate?

Mr. KELLAWAY: A Committee. They offered to dispose of the linen in conjunction with the Disposal Board on a profit-sharing basis under which the trade would have borne 25 per cent. of any loss below 1s. 1d. per yard, and would have received 25 per cent of any profit over that figure. That was an offer we were unable to accept and I submit that we were justified in so doing by the contract into which we have now entered. Instead of 1s. 1d. per yard we have got s. 8d. per yard, and if we accepted the offer of the linen manufacturers, we should have had to hand over to them over £300,000 which now goes into the pockets of the taxpayers. It is said that we have enabled one man to create a corner in this linen. I do not believe it. You can only create an injurious monopoly when you monopolise something that the public must have and for which there is no substitute. This linen is not the ordinary linen of commerce, it is unbleached and it is of unusual size. It is of a quality such as is not usually used by housewives. It will be a difficult problem to sell that linen commercially, and so far from Mr. Martin having been able to create a corner, he will now have to compete with the linen manufacturers of Belfast, who are now free to resume their ordinary peace output, and if the and he were to attempt to create a corner, they have to fear the products of Lancashire, and the cotton goods of Lancashire have improved
so much in quality during the War, that they are very fast approaching to the quality of linen. Then we are criticised for not having put the linen into the hands of retail people. Is it really thought that the Disposal Board did not attempt to take that obvious step? I hope I am not giving away any secret which my Noble Friend the Minister would object to my giving away when I mention that Lord Inverforth carried samples of this linen in his pocket to different retailers in London and endeavoured to sell it to them. I think it is the first occasion on which a Minister of the Crown has acted as a commercial traveller on behalf of a Government Department, but, though he did so, he was unable to secure offers for anything like the quantity or for anything more than an infinitesimal percentage of the quantity of which we had to dispose I do not know the reasons why the wholesale and retail trade would not touch this linen, but touch it they would not. Some of them, I notice since, would have touched it if they could have got it at 6d. per yard, which they declared to be its real value. Mr. Martin has been called a man who wants to corner an essential product. Mr. Martin, whom I have never met, must be an exceedingly courageous man. I do not know what the outcome of this transaction is going to be, but he must be an exceedingly courageous man. I believe if he can set up the necessary organisation that he will be able to sell it at a profit, if not in this country, where it would be impossible for the linen to be absorded anything like fully, then in America or in other countries; and if lie makes a profit on that transaction he is entitled to it, for he will have relieved the Government of an exceedingly difficult problem and the Disposal Board of 43,000,000 yards of linen. I thought it right to deal in some detail with what has been called the "Great Linen Scandal," and another example of profiteering by the Government. If we are profiteering, it has been done in the interests of the taxpayers, and the money-goes into the taxpayers' pockets.
There is only one other branch of the work of the Disposal Board on which I intend to dwell, and that is the sale of national factories. I dwell on this because I know how deep is the interest taken in this subject, especially in the ranks of the Labour party. It was pressed on me in March last, that we ought to use these factories not to get them back to ordinary production, but in
order to absorb the unemployed men and women in this country. I put before the House on that occasion the reasons why, an my view, there was no chance of solving the unemployed problem on those lines, and I said that I thought that the best way of using those national factories to reduce the volume of unemployment was to get them into the hands of men who would use them in industries which they understood, and for whose products there would be a ready demand. I will now give to the House, what I could not give, then, a list of some of the industries on which the national factories which have so far been sold are now engaged. The national factory at Gateshead, which during the War was making machine tools, is now occupied in making dog chucks, a trade which up to the present has been almost entirely in the hands of American firms.

Mr. ROSE: How long has that been in the hands of Americans exclusively?

Mr. KELLAWAY: What I said was, "up to the present almost entirely in the hands of American firms." The Liverpool National Shell Factory will now be used for repairing trams. The Bootle National Shell Factory is being used for the repair of life boats. The Bootle National Gun Factory is to be devoted to general engineering. The Workington National Shell Factory is to produce mechanical toys. Bacup National Shell Factory has been converted from a 4.5 in. shell rectification shop to a weaving shed. The Trafford Park Factory has turned over from billet-breaking to constructional engineering. The Bradford munitions factory, which was doing shell and fuse manufacture, is to be used for dyeing and finishing processes, and so I might go on through a long list of factories which, before we sold them, were engaged in producing deadly munitions of war, and which are now engaged or very soon will be in producing articles necessary for peace. Which is the better way, and I put this to those who have a conscientious conviction that the factories might have been used to deal with the unemployed problem more effectively if we use them as State workshops. Which is the better way, to. get those shops producing things, for which there is a natural demand, or to convert them into State workshops which would only be kept alive by large and continued doses of
oxygen from the Treasury. Before I leave this subject, I think I ought to acknowledge the effective way in which this most difficult work of realising the national factories, built for war purposes, and not adapted, many of them, for peace purposes, has been carried on in that branch of the organisation over which Sir Howard Frank presides. It is only due to him that I should make that acknowledgment on behalf of the Ministry. I come now to say a word or two only as to the oil development work.
I should like the House to know that the oil developmeont at Hardstoft has gone on satisfactorily. The flow has now reached the rate of eleven barrels a day, or 400 gallons. I desire to repeat the statement which I made to the House when I referred to this question previously, namely, that it is much too early yet to say whether we have really found an extensive oil field or not, but sufficient has been found to justify the experiment on which the Government embarked.
Having given the new tasks, which have been thrown on the Ministry, the liquidation of the old contracts, and the disposal of works and other things to which I have referred, I now desire to give the House figures of the extent to which we have been able to demobilise our headquarters staff. Obviously the problem was not so easy as in the Departments which have been given no fresh work to do. Here we have these new Departments, but in spite of that fact, I am pleased to be able to tell the Committee that whilst our staff at date of the Armistice was 25,144 persons on the 31st May, it had been reduced by 8,523 persons, and notices were given on the 31st May, terminating appointments which will make the reduction from the date of the Armistice, to the 1st July, 10,060. I think a reduction of 10,000 on a total staff of 25,000, having regard to the circumstance to which I have referred, is a highly creditable reduction.
I have already trespassed so long on the patience of the Committee that I must refer very shortly only to a subject on which I should like to have said more than I shall say now, and that is the position in which this country stands as the result of its war experience, and its position as an industrial producer, and how it has been affected by the War. It is necessary, now that the War has been won by our soldiers, in a triumph which is expressed
in the Peace Treaty, that we should realise that, side by side with the fighting in the field, there went on in the factories and in the laboratories of this country, just as deadly a struggle, not between soldiers, but between craftsmen, engineers, scientists, and chemists, and we shall not understand the real inwardness of this War until we get down to that fact. We started the War with German fuses for our shells, with German sights for our guns, with German magnetos and German plugs for our motor transport and aircraft, with German sulphuric acid and toluol for our high explosives, with German optical glass for our binoculars, with German electric bulbs for our submarines and battleships, with German tungsten required in connection with the manufacture of high-speed steel for our machine tools, and with German spelter for gun metals and other alloys. This was a humiliating state of things. Let us be thankful that it was only humiliating and not fatal. Thanks to the ingenuity, skill, and patriotism of British chemists, British scientists, British manufacturers, and British craftsmen, we were able during the War, working under war conditions, and moved by the terrible necessity of preserving our existence, to make ourselves independent of and superior to Germany in the production of every one of those essential materials. I do not wish to become controversial or to draw conclusions further than the facts would justify, but it is right that I should recall the lamentable and sinister circumstance that, in regard to some of these products to which I have referred, Germany secured her predominance in them by the skill and energy with which she exploited British raw material. It was British tungsten that she used to make her highs peed steel. It was British mica that she used for magnetos and plugs. It was British spelter that she used for the alloys with which she helped to destroy British soldiers. I am an old Free Trader, and I suppose I did as much as most men in the Liberal party in the Free Trade election to help my party to win in that great fight; but, no man, whatever his political | views may have been, can leave facts of that kind on one side as if they never had been. I would beseech those who discuss this question to discuss it not from the point of view of men who want to make a party score, but with the desire to maintain and to strengthen British indus-
try, to give it a fair chance, to relieve it from the handicap from which we suffered during the early stages of the War.
I have now come to the end of what I wish to say to the House, but I wish my closing words to be words of encouragement and of hope in regard to the future of British industry. I want the Committee to try and see, behind the dry statistical information which I have had to inflict on them, the real magnificence of the achievement which the industry of this country accomplished during the War. We have never been regarded as a particularly quick or ingenious people; we have rather loved the idea that the strength of this country and our position in the world have depended on a certain elemental force of character not associated with any imagination or any grace, but the story of what British industry has done in this War is worthy of the story of what the British Army and the British Navy have done in this War—worthy to stand beside it. When we were brought face to face with threat to our liberty, British industry proved that there was no limit of human effort beyond its capacity. We went on for twelve months in our steady old way, thinking we could win the War because our intentions were good, because we had always loved peace, but the time came when the old heresies were swept away. This tired, old, unimaginative people became grim, determined, alert, and awakened. I can never contemplate that spectacle without recalling the great vision of Milton:
I think I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks,
This old, tired, and unimaginative people, as we were thought to be, has proved itself
a people not slow and dull, but of quick, ingenious and searching spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy in execution, not below the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.

Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: I am sure everyone has listened with the greatest pleasure and a great deal of information to the very fine speech which has been made by the Deputy-Minister of Munitions, a speech which I do not think was materially improved by incursions into the field of political economy. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] The House of Commons, I would remind hon. Members, exists for the expression of divergent opinions, and that is my view. I think
the hon. Gentleman did quite right in not attempting, on a Vote which only covers one Department, to defend the Government policy of using money recovered by the sale of Government stores in relief of the Estimates of the Departments. It is a subject on which my right hon. Friend beside me (Sir D. Maclean) has said something before, and on which people hold strong views, but it does not seem to be appropriately dealt with on the Estimates of one Department. Nobody who has followed the history of the War could fail to endorse very heartily everything the hon. Gentleman has said about the great work which has been done by the Ministry of Munitions. We began the War without being in the least apprised of what sort of material was required for a European war, and if ever we reach the unfortunate point when he have to launch into another war, I think we shall enter that war also with means as much unfamiliar to the people of that time as the means which were used in this War were unfamiliar to us, and that appears to me to vitiate entirely the arguments which people use for piling up the sort of munitions we are making to-day as if there was the least chance of those munitions being suitable for any other conflict in which we might unhappily have to engage in the future. During the War I was interested in the Air Force, and I can still remember the real feeling of pleasure and relief it was to me when I visited home during leave and my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board (Dr. Addison) was able to show how the appalling deficiency in the supply of aircraft was being made good by the new programme which the Munitions Board was preparing at that moment. But it does seem to me essential, looking at the Department as one dealing with munitions of war, to realise that it is not in the heaping up of things we have got that we can make any preparation of things whatever for any future conflict in which we might be engaged. That, really, is the answer to the hon. Gentleman's tirade against the Free Trade position of this country. The bearing of our fiscal policy on our success in the War is sufficiently well known to need no defence from me, but to have the world as our market, to be in touch with every invention and every country, is a far better means of keeping ahead in scientific research than any foolish policy of shutting
up ourselves in an island and imagining in that way we are best in a position to defend ourselves against external foes. The hon. Gentleman was eloquent on the subject of the administration of his Department, and he exhibited a pugnacity which I think is suitable to a Deputy-Minister of Munitions, but he really attacked a great many criticisms which have never been made, and he passed by some criticisms which have been made. It was not only the Comptroller and Auditor-General who had criticisms to make: there was the Committee on National Expenditure, which noted many cases of really bad business mismanagement, and I have not the least—

Mr. KELLAWAY: What Report?

Captain BENN: I am not speaking of the past year, but it is not really appropriate on this Estimate to discuss it except in so far as the hon. Gentleman himself has felt justified in covering the whole field of the work of his Department, which ! was right to this extent, that it is the first occasion on which any Minister of Munitions has really been at liberty to-speak freely of the work of his Department. So that, if I do not attack the hon. Gentleman for maladministration in the past, he must not suppose it is because I do not think such cases could be found and justified. I agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who said a few weeks ago only that in the course of a war you were bound to have instances of mismanagement and waste, not only in connection with the invention of tracer bullets, but you have got to have waste on account of the speed at which things were done and the fact that it was better sometimes to make a mistake than not to take some action immediately. I hope, therefore, the hon. Gentleman will not think I am unable, but merely unwilling, to make criticisms. He said some very interesting things about the costing system. Those who had the privilege during the War of examining the wonderful costing system which was installed at the Ministry of Munitions must feel that its institution and more general use by Government Departments might be a very good thing. There was a Report only a few days ago of a Committee which was dealing with trusts and rings in this country, and it does seem to me that in the costing system which was first of all introduced under my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Gov-
ernment Board there is an instrument ready to our hand for checking overcharges by any trusts or rings. Travelling just a little into the inviting field of fiscal controversy like my hon. Friend, I would direct his attention to the fact that trusts and rings are mainly encouraged by his own right hon. colleague the President of the Board of Trade, and I only wish the President of the Board of Trade and his Under-Secretary could have been here today to hear the fine periods of ray hon. Friend in dealing with the necessity of motor cars as the raw material of commerce. It certainly would have been illuminating and would have warmed in his breast some of the old flames of Free Trade to which he was at one time susceptible.
As regards the linen question, I think any business man, regarding the question from a business point of view, who heard what the hon. Gentleman said must have been satisfied, with one reservation, that the Government acted in a businesslike way. I should like to know, however, exactly as to the position taken up by the Belfast linen manufacturers. How far were they in a position to control the whole buying market? How far were they in a position to corner the buyers so as to put the hon. Gentleman when he wont to dispose of his linen completely without demand? I should like to ask whether the retailers and manufacturers, or any of the people who were able to buy the linen, made any effort to unite themselves in the hope of extorting from the Government stores at prices below those reasonably to be demanded, because, if so, that is a form of corner—not Mr. Martin's corner—but a form of corner upon which we should ask for some information.
There are one or two other matters which I think are appropriate to this Vote, some small and some great. Among small matters we have to remember that the hon. Gentleman supplies all these motor cars which flood the neighbourhood of Whitehall and occasion so much scandal, and I should like to ask this question, namely, what exact restrictions he imposes on the supply of these cars. Suppose one of these Ministers who holds a dual post—and plurality is almost a rule on the Front Bench to-day—puts in for a motor-car for each of these separate Departments, what would the hon. Gentleman do, or what would his noble chief do? What form of restraint does he impose to
see that some check is kept on this public expenditure? I would like to ask him tins, too. Are these motor-ears allotted to officers? Does the hon. Gentleman say to the War Office, "Here are ten or twenty cars; they are for you, take them, and do exactly as you please with them," or does he say, "I can provide so much mileage for the Ministry?" I understand the answer to the motor-car question is that if a man is paid a high salary, it is worth while providing him with a quick means of transit. That seems a reasonable answer. I do not want a man who is paid a large salary to have to waste time in getting about. It is tantamount to raising a man's salary. It is a camouflage rise in salary. Is that what happens, or does the hon. Gentleman simply say there are so many cars for such a Department, and they have to muddle along as best they can? Would it not be possible to do with these cars what the Air Ministry did during the War, namely, have a car pool and let people apply for a car when they want it, and so put to the greatest possible use the considerable amount of capital sunk in this means of Government transport? That is only a small matter, but it is one in which I believe the public take a considerable amount of interest.
There is another small matter, and that is the manufacture of war medals. I think the hon. Gentleman, in the wide range of magnificent activities for which he is responsible to this House, does include the manufacture of war medals. I do not know whether he can give us any information as to when the medals, particularly the Mons Star and the Overseas Star, will be ready for distribution, and also when the general war medal is likely to be given out. I do not know whether he is qualified to give any particulars about the scope of these medals or on what principle they are to be distributed, whether bars are to be added, whether the Allies are to give medals, or whether it is to be a general war medal. Of course the Committee would be greatly interested to know, though I suppose it is outside the scope of his. Department.
I need not emphasise the good points about the hon. Gentleman's Department, and the words of praise showered on him from time to time, because I do not think any would have escaped his own attention, but there is a matter for the future in which I think the House is very properly interested. We are given to understand that the Ministry of Munitions is to be
turned into a Ministry of Supply. Primâ facie, that seems to be a really good business proposition, but we have not seen the Bill—if there is going to be a Bill—for turning it into a Ministry of Supply, and 1 think the Minister above him is still Minister of Munitions of War, and I do not think he is officially known as Minister of Supply. Can the hon. Gentleman give us any particulars about this? First of all, is there going to be a change of name? At some stages of the human career a change of name is very significant. If so—and that is a minor matter compared with this—is there going to be a real assembly under one control of all the purchases of supplies for Government Departments? I suppose if you were to go to the Admiralty, the Director of Contracts would explain that, although sailors wear boots, just as soldiers wear boots, the sort of boot the sailor wears is the sort that can only be bought by a sailor, and the sort of paint used to paint warships is paint which could not possibly be used to paint motor cars. That may be a sufficient reason, but it has not been made plain, and to the ordinary man it does seem a reasonable thing to put under one control the whole purchase of supplies for Government Departments. Coal, for instance, is most important, because, in the first place, you eliminate that competition which simply puts up the price against yourself, an instance of which we used to see in the old aeroplane engines, when the Royal Naval Air Service went into the market to buy an. engine, and the Royal Flying Corps went in and bid against them. Is that sort of thing going on now, and, if so, when is the Government going to assemble, under one roof, all the purchases of supplies for the various Government Departments? That, I think, is a matter of high policy on which the Committee would be very glad to have the opinion of the Government.
There is only one other matter to which I intend to refer, and that is one which also touches a high political principle, namely, the question of royalties. I understand the position to be at present that the Government brought in a Bill which touched the question of royalties during the War, and it was withdrawn on account of the opposition. They passed, in 1918, another Bill, which, I understand, did nothing but give the Government the power to prohibit the boring for oil, and then, under that Bill and the powers of the Defence of the Realm Act, they
licensed certain patriotic experts to bore for oil in the Government interest. Of course, the question was immediately raised, "Whose is the oil?" and the reply of the Government was that all these controversial matters must be left until after the War, and they simply licensed someone to bore for oil and to get the oil most urgently needed for purposes of war, leaving for decision afterwards whose property it was. There is one very important difference which I should like to point out between oil and coal. The purpose of the prohibition of boring for oil is, I understand', that if many people bore for oil they are draining the oil in different sections, whereas if one person bores for oil, you stand a chance of tapping a considerable field, or pool, of oil, so that there is no proper ground for saying that the oil which happens to come up through a boring in one person's ground is necessarily oil which has anything to do with his own surface. On this point I think we ought to ask for some definite assurance from the Government that the oil which is secured in big or small quantities will be, by Act of Parliament, declared to be the property of the people and the Government of this country.

Sir EDWARD CARSON: May I add my congratulations to my lion. Friend on the very able and very frank statement he has given to the Committee with reference to the work of his Department? What strikes one most of all is how much adverse criticism there always is on occasions when there is no opportunity of answering, and how little criticism there is on an occasion where the Minister is brought face to face with those who criticise him. My hon. Friend seemed to me to grapple with all the criticisms that have been made outside this House on platforms and in the Press, and, may I say, shewing himself somewhat superior in that respect to many of his colleagues in the Government, he gave me the impression that he was not so much afraid of the Press as other Members of the Government so constantly show themselves to be. I can assure him he will lose nothing by his courage in tackling the Press. He may take it, if he will, from me that whatever he does in his Department, whether he sells at a profit or whether he sells at a loss, he will be criticised by sections of the Press, equally unjustly in both cases and very often equally with ignorance. I am not going into the many questions which he has disposed of, I think, in a
manner entirely satisfactory to those who have listened to him, and I am very sorry there was not a fuller attendance of the Committee to hear the statement he made. To my mind, it is daily becoming a matter of most urgent anxiety as to how the House is to be carried on if only a few Members on important occasions of this kind are enabled to attend, because there is no other way in which a Member can hear the real truth and criticise the statements put forward to get at the truth than by listening to statements of important operations of the kind to which reference has been made to-day, costing the taxpayers millions of money.
I have risen, however, merely as regards one point, and I have risen because I am a Member of one of the Divisions of Belfast. Reference has been made to a linen deal with a certain gentleman named Martin, who seems to have gained greater notoriety in the last few days than he has ever done in the rest of his life. I always notice that, for some reason or other, even in regard to a commercial deal of this kind, there is a certain section of the Press which cannot help introducing the Irish question, and because the linen was sold to a gentleman of the name of Martin for £4,000,000, and because the Belfast trade thought Martin had made a bad bargain and refused to come up to his price, therefore Belfast is one of the most unpatriotic places that has ever existed in the whole of the United Kingdom, and the Government ought at once to handle the Irish question and settle it so as to put an end to these monstrous transactions on the part of Belfast. That is the kind of petty political mud-slinging which goes on in these papers, which are thirsting to get back to political controversies at the most critical time in the history of this country. My hon. and gallant Friend who has just spoken evidently reads these papers, because, having nothing else with which to find fault in the statement of my hon. Friend as regards the linen deal, he would like to have some information as to whether there has not been a "corner" in Belfast. Who made that statement? For all this, which has been put forward to try in some way or other to sling mud at Belfast, there is not a shadow of foundation.
This is a moat complicated question. I myself had to deal with the early stages of it, and, stated shortly, the Belfast linen trade were invited by the Govern-
ment to stop the manufacturing, even to the extent of one inch, of linen for domestic purposes, and to turn on the whole of their mills at all cost to the manufacture of aeroplane cloth, and they did so. Then it is said they charged an exorbitant price. Did they? The price of flax was controlled by the Government. The labour was controlled by the Government, and the Government themselves fixed the price that they had to pay to the Belfast linen manufacturers. And then they are called "profiteers." So far as regards the price, the whole of the mills being turned on for this purpose, when the Belfast manufacturers saw that there was the probability of an armistice late in September, they were only too anxious to get away from this profiteering in making, as it is called, the aeroplane cloth. They went to the Government and said, "You have got very large stocks on hand; we are quite willing now, rather than have a crash in the future, to turn on shorter hours and produce less of this stuff for you under our contracts; let us turn on some of our mills, if you will, and get them into ordinary trade." The Government said, "No, we wish you to go on manufacturing at this price this aeroplane cloth." Then came the Armistice. There were many negotiations. I remember them perfectly well. The Government at one time was suggesting that they should at once stop manufacturing all the aeroplane cloth which was half manufactured, and which could be applied to nothing else. The result would have been that the mills would have had to be shut down, and something between 20,000 and 50,000 people would have had to be turned into the street. I remember all the negotiations we had with the Government at the time. The Government said, "Very well, go on manufacturing cloth, and we will try and see how it is to be disposed of." Of course the political opponents of Belfast give wide currency to the idea that the Belfast traders tried to corner this cloth in some way or other at 3d. a yard. I read that myself in one of these rags. There is not the slightest foundation for it. It is a pure lie, a pure invention. They made many offers to the Government, including the one to which my hon. Friend referred, that of 21st March, 1919. In this they offered that the whole of the stock should be liquidated on Government account, that a Committee should be set up of members of the trade and representatives, of the Government, and
that the latter should have the power of veto in regard to everything. They suggested that the whole of the stuff should be liquidated, and that the profits, less 25 per cent., should go to the Government, and that 25 per cent, should be at the disposal of the trade; that the trade should guarantee any possible losses; that any losses arising from the Liquidating Committee's operations should be borne by the Government, and that the Air Department should be reimbursed by the trade to the extent of 25 per cent, thereon. Could a fairer offer be made?
The Government did not take it. They thought theirs was the best way of dealing with this matter. Then comes along Mr. Martin. He offers £4,000,000 of money. All I can say is that from all the communications I have had from Belfast they there think that the Government have made a splendid sale. They wish them luck, and also Mr. Martin, if he can make a handsome profit out of it. But they are entirely unconcerned and unperturbed. Their only one wish is to get back to their normal business, in order that they may get going again the great industry for the purpose of supplying the many needs which are felt in many households at the present moment. That is the whole story on which the mud-slinging has been founded. I am not accusing my hon. and gallant Friend opposite of throwing any mud. On the contrary, I think he stated the case perfectly fairly. I can say this: so far as the Belfast linen trade is concerned they are quite willing tomorrow that any tribunal should be set up and the whole of the transactions investigated, for it will be found that in this, as in all other dealings with the Government, they acted from the most patriotic motives and actions in trying to help the Government in the best interest of the country.

Mr. HOLMES: As representing a portion of the district of Derbyshire where the borings for oil have taken place, I am rather disappointed at the information given to the House by the hon. Gentleman opposite. There are those who have been anxious to know to whom the oil is to belong. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Leith (Captain W. Benn) was correct in saying that for the moment operations are proceeding under the Defence of the Realm Act, but this has not settled any of the difficult questions. I
believe there is a universal feeling throughout the country that where oil is found it should belong to the nation, and no royalties should be paid thereon. It is very important that this matter should be settled soon. When the first oil boring took place at Hardstoft, Lord Hartington, the son of the Duke of Devonshire, who owns the land, attended. Perhaps the House will allow me to read one or two sentences from his speech.
He had,
he said,
come there to make it clear that his father's attorneys, acting on his behalf, were prepared to do all that lay in their power to secure a supply of oil for the Government. At the same time he wished to make it clear that the landowners did not permanently give up their rights over the oil. The Government were sinking the well with their sanction. If they had not given that sanction they would have been served with a notice under the Defence of the Realm Act. They did not admit the legality of the regulations—and the Government did not admit it either, or they would not have brought in a Bill to deal with the matter. The landowners were not prepared to let this right or intents stand for one moment in the way of this vital matter of the production of oil necessary for the prosecution of the War. The settlement of the question must be left for the moment, but when the moment for settlement did arrive, they were not prepared to see large fortunes made out of Derbyshire oil without compensation to those interested in the soil, whether as owners or occupiers.
Here the Ministry have got a serious contest before them with the ground landlords. I hope they will get this contest over as soon as possible. Oil is accumulating, and one hopes there is a great deal of oil. It is necessary not merely to settle the question of royalties, but also to settle the right of the Government to the oil, or who has the right to refine it, who to sell the petrol, the lamp-oil, and the other products that are going to accrue. I hope the representative of the Ministry, who replies later, will be able to tell us what are the plans which they must have in their minds in regard to this oil. I want to say one word from a local point of view. It has been said, though erroneously, that already in the district things are smeared with petroleum, that the food tastes of it and that the hedgerows are blighted. That was stated by a correspondent of the "Times." There is no foundation for it. I have been down there myself, and find that the statement is not correct. On the other hand, I have been informed by men who have been in California and other big oil districts that in many cases for miles round the country is filled with the vapours of petroleum,
and the health of the people is thereby affected. Doubtless the Ministry have taken expert opinion on that particular point. I hope they will assure those who live in that part of the country, where the clarity of the atmosphere is possibly second to none, that the beautiful air and other natural advantages are not going to be spoiled by the petroleum vapours from either the refineries or the pipes. When the right hon. Gentleman replies, I hope he will deal with these points—the national point of view and also the local point of view. That is all I want to say in regard to the oil. But I want to ask the hon. Gentleman to give us some more information in regard to the National Smelting Company which commenced to put up a factory at Avonmouth. Following questions put in the House a few weeks ago, we were informed that this company had a capital of £500,000, but that it had only called up from its shareholders Is. per share, or £25,000, whereas the Government had advanced on debentures over £500,000 of money. Building operations have been suspended. I believe the correct words of the reply given in the House were that the Government Department concerned was considering the matter, and that experts were to be consulted. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman when he replies will be able to tell me what the result of the consideration of the Government Department has been, what the advice of the experts has been, and whether any more money is to be sunk by the company on this factory which has never been completed?

6.0 P.M.

Mr. ROSE: I rather regret that the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Kellaway), in making his speech, found wisdom in going back to very ancient history. A great deal of the early story of the Ministry of Munitions might only too willingly have been allowed to remain in forgetfuiness. As, however, the hon. Member has taken the course he has, it seems to me to Le only part and parcel of the old policy of suggesting that this Ministry of Munitions did actually save the country from absolute catastrophe. We have heard the [...]on. Gentleman speak to-night on the timid and unimaginative Briton v ho wakened up to engineering invention in the offices of the Ministry of Munitions. Has the hon. Member never heard of Stephenson, Mawdsley, Fulton, Crompton and Hythe? Can he tell us any great engineer or mechanical inventor who was
not a Briton? This is the home, the birth-place of engineering. It has always been so. We needed a Ministry of Munitions to discover all these latent talents which we thought we possessed for years before, but evidently did not! We got our dog-chucks from America! But a dog-chuck is part of a lathe, and the man who makes the lathe makes the dog-chuck. I used dog-chucks when I was an apprentice to the trade nearly fifty years ago. It was made in England. The tool steel we get from Germany is the very best tool steel of the world! Well, high-grade tool steel is a Sheffield production; it is made from Swedish iron, not from German iron at all! It seems to be absolutely essential that all Ministers who have charge of any one of these multitudinous Ministries of ours should make out a case. I venture to say that when what is called the "shell" controversy was on that the inference left in our minds was that the shell king had mounted the steps of his alabaster throne, put on his tin halo— made in Carmelite House—waved his magician's wand and said: "Let there be shells," and there were shells! As a matter of fact, let me quote what Lord Sydenham said, and nobody has yet controverted his statement. I am quoting from a letter which appeared in the "Times" of the 10th of June by Major-General Mahon, He says:
What was the result of this strenuous endeavour? Lord Sydenham has said and said truly in his letter published in the ' Times ' on 28th May. The first round completed by the Munitions Department did not become available till the middle of April, 1916.' Does the man in the street realise what this means? It means that the loud trumpets which proclaimed the wonderful works of th.9 Ministry of Munitions, the speeches up and down the country and in the House, retailing what 'I' did and what 'we' did, the whole propagandism of political claptrap, in reality proclaimed the achievement of the War Office and the solution of the problem of creating a vast supply out of nothing.
Most engineers know that the preparations for making high explosive shells were made by the late Lord Kitchener. A good deal more might be said on that topic, but as I anticipate that the House will be engaged before long dealing with this promised Ministry of Supply Bill, the object of which is to perpetuate the Ministry of Munitions under a new name, much more will have to be said then, and there are some things which necessarily cannot be said now which may be and will
be said then. I want to disabuse the mind of the Committee in regard to any idea they may have that I am trying to be hypercritical. I have no concern about this linen deal. I have nothing to urge against the claim which the hon. Member has put forward about the necessary cost of experimental work. As a practical man I know something about that, and I ought to know. That is not altogether what we want to grumble about, if it is necessary to grumble. There is one thing upon which the Labour party is particularly, and I think rightly exercised, and that is the disposal of the Government factories. I am bound to say, and I think it only right to say on this point that I do not see quite eye to eye with my colleagues, most of whom are now at Southport. I have never believed and I have never found any evidence yet that convinces me, as a practical engineer, or which has convinced the scores of practical technical and industrial engineers whom I know, that it was ever necessary to build factories. The fact that it was not necessary is found in this collateral fact that the whole of the factories they built, equipped or acquired, 250 in number—even those that have been finished, and very few of them were ever finished—the whole produce at market price would not cover the cost of erection and equipment.
Take one particular case, that of the huge machine gun factory at Burton-on-Trent. There was no great shortage of machine guns that necessitated that. There was no shortage of equipment that necessitated the setting up of such a factory, but that factory was never finished, and is not now finished, and all the machinery is there lying in packing cases, and not one machine has been set up. I was passing with an engineer friend, who is a Member of this House, through Guide Bridge last Friday, and I had not been in that district for several years before. I was surprised to see acres and acres of the place covered with buildings. I asked my friend, "What are they building there?" and he replied, "That is an aerodrome and aeroplane works." I further inquired, "What are they doing there?" and the reply was, "Nothing, they never have done anything yet there. The man who got the contract for that was a publican, and it is the talk of the neighbourhood about here." These are not isolated but typical cases. I offer a
challenge to the Ministry of Munitions and the Government to demonstrate, not by figures concocted in their Departments that the whole products of the whole of those 250 factories put together would cover their cost. It seems to me that in regard to a Ministry with such a past it is almost impossible to deal very closely with its past.
We have heard something to-night about a wonderful Machine Tools Department. I think this is the most staggering instance of Departmental impudence that has ever been suggested. The Machine Tools Department is the most hopeless failure of the War, and one of the results has been that the big machine tool makers have been allowed to charge the Government not the makers' and agents' price but the users' price, and they have been so patriotic as that. As every practical man knows, the agency percentage varies very considerably, and often assumes very large proportions. In the course of the War they have been allowed to add to their prices, first 40 per cent. and then 10 per cent. Some of them have been allowed to compound and actually charge 54 per cent., while others have only been allowed the 40 per cent., and then an additional 10 per cent. They have also been allowed a bonus for standard tools, which were not required by the Government. They would never have been left on their hands, because they had ample opportunities of selling them at 15 per cent. more than the Government price, which was the usual price. All these things have been done in the interests of what is called organisation.
There was a fiction, and a very pleasant fiction, that a great organising genius came into our midst, sent from heaven, for the special purpose of organising the engineering industry, and he was supposed to be a person possessed of prodigious driving power. It was the present Prime Minister. He was the person who organised the engineering industry, and he was the person possessed of prodigious driving power. I admit he possessed driving power, for he drove the industry into chaos and he drove all the workers to the verge of exasperation and kept them there. There is no doubt about his driving power, and all this that was done in the interest of organisation had far better have been left undone. I am not speaking only the opinion of an individual, because I can quote an opinion respected in this House, namely, that of Alexander Adamson, who
for some time was director of the Vickers Maxim Company at Barrow. In a letter he wrote to the "Times," he urged that it would be far better to leave the engineering industry to its own devices, that we should get a better output and probably get it at a more reasonable price, and there would certainly never have been the industrial difficulties there have been under the auspices of the Minister. There are a great many engineers in the country who had no sort of sympathy with the Ministry controlling the engineering industry, and they have no more sympathy now than they had then. This Ministry, with a record that is not at all enviable-and I am not at all sure it is very creditable—comes down here and asks for £185,000,000 with the assurance of Mr. Montague Tigg, when he was borrowing half-a-crown. This does not seem to me to be quite a fair way of treating the House or the country.
There is another phase of the question. This is one of the inevitable outcomes of bureaucracy, and unless a tight hand is going to be put on all this Ministry making and expanding, you are going to have the same chronicle for the next ten years—a chronicle of wanton waste and extravagance, and of impedimenta to all that is good for us in every department of our public life. I assume the House has made up its mind to grant this money, and am sorry there is to be no organised opposition to it. I do not think the Ministry of Munitions is fit to be trusted with what amounts practically to a blank cheque. The assurances we have had to-night in regard to the reduction of the staff leaves mo colder than ever. Whatever could they have been doing with 25,000 officials? We are told that now they have more work to do than ever they had before, and they can reduce the staff to 15,000. What do they want with 15,000 officials?
I want to say a word or two about this wonderful Costings Department. I know more than I feel at liberty to say to-night, because, as a matter of fact, I am a member of a Committee on public expenditure, and until certain matters are reported upon I do not think it would be quite within my province to make any statement concerning them. The Costings Department appears to have devoted its energies exclusively to three or four standard productions, particularly shells, and we have heard ad nauseum how these wonderful people costed down the price of eighteen-pounder shells from 18s. something to 12s.
Those were not the figures given to me previously from another source. I was told that they had brought the price down from one guinea to half-a-guinea. A discrepancy of one or two shillings on 200,000,000 or 300,000,000 shells does not matter. What did you get for 10s. 6d.— a shell ready for the gunners? Nothing of the sort. It was simply the steel shell case. They never costed the fuse, the copper band, or the filling. I cannot make out what the contractors were making out of it before. As far as I know from information inside the workshop, it is now nearly three years since the price was reduced, and it strikes me very forcibly, if there were an inquiry, that we should find that it was reduced before there was any Costings Department at all. I venture to say that it was reduced before the Costings Department was set up. It does not seem to me right, and it does not seem to square with one's sense of public probity that Parliament should be asked to grant a huge sum of money for a purpose that it does not understand, and by a method with which it has been inadequately acquainted.
When is all this million squandering mania to cease, and, if it does not cease, where is it going to lead us? People talk about organising an industry or a Department. Blessed words "organisation," "co-ordination," "unification," "regularisation"! It does not matter how you phrase it. You can call it by any word you like, but you will never make sanity out of these bedlamites. If there are millions to fling about, let us all have a hand in it. Let us have a chance of doing some of the flinging ourselves, and. not hand it over to a Ministry to fling them for us. I dare say that the Disposal Board is doing a wonderful work, and I gladly subscribe to the testimonial of the Committee of which I am a member. It appears to us to be done efficiently, but they should never have them to dispose of. It certainly has been my conviction all through that there never was the necessity to build these factories, and there is proof of that in the fact that not half of them are finished to-day and in not a third of them has a stroke of work been done. Seeing, however, that they are there, and that we have got them, the least that we can do is to make the best use of them that we can for the benefit of the industrial classes who, after all, will have to pay most of the cost.
I do not think that I ought to sit down without emphasising my objection to departmentalisation. Our esteemed friend Mr. Dooley, in his essay upon "Millionaires," pictures Andrew Carnegie contemplating a workman, and he makes him say, "Is the poor man starving? Then 1 will give him a free library." It seems to me that the great organising geniuses who guide the destinies of our people say, if there is anything wrong with the body politic, "We will have another Minister." They set up the Ministry of Munitions, the most inept of any Ministry ever set up in this or any other country. We can tell that from the Bills that they keep putting in. We have one to-day for £185,000,000, and there was one for about £700,000,000 last year. I do not know whether the House is satisfied either with the quantity or quality of the goods which we have got in return for all these millions. As one individual, I am not. I do not think that my countrymen quite realise what we all lost when the "Hampshire" went down with the man who told us that the War would last three years. Had he been left alone and had he not been entangled with all these sordid political intrigues it would have been over. He was the wisest and the best counsellor that this nation has had for generations. He was a great soldier and a great engineer, and he it was who understood that this was an engineers' war and why it was an engineers' war. We owe the Ministry of Munitions no thanks. We owe to their mismanagement, their extravagance, and their waste a period of another year of war and the loss of a million lives of men who ought to be with us to-day.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: The right hon. and learned Member for the Duncairn Division (Sir E. Carson) remarked on the fact that there had been very little criticism of the Ministry, but if he had heard the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down (Mr. Rose), to which we have all listened with great pleasure, he would have been satisfied that there had been some criticism and criticism very much to the point. I will make one or two criticisms myself, and I will go straight to the greatest criticism of all. It is that seven months after the Armistice, which proclaimed the complete defeat of our enemies in the War, and on the day when we get the joyful news that the German Government will
sign unconditionally our peace terms, we should be asked for Appropriations-in-Aid of £185,068,000 for a Ministry which was not in existence and which was not necessary in 1914, when we had a Navy second to none and we had an excellently-equipped and well-organised Army. When the Navy second to our own has just been scuttled by a breach of faith by its crew at Scapa, when the world is sick of war and every one in his heart knows that we want peace and that peace is the only hope for Europe and for millions of people in Europe, we are asked to vote £185,000,000 for this Ministry of Munitions, which is now going to be the Ministry of Supply, and' is apparently to be perpetuated for ever. What is it going to lead to? What have we fought the war for? Hotels, which are badly needed, are still occupied by the 15,000 officials which remain. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman upon having got rid of a number. I am sure he is to be congratulated in view of the- policy of the Government. It is the whole policy behind which is at fault. We are starting again on a wasteful expenditure on armaments, and it is going to lead' us to bankruptcy if not into another war. That is my major criticism. I cannot altogether blame the right hon. Gentleman or level this criticism at him. It is the whole policy of the Government which is at fault. It shows that we do not understand what our policy is going to be, and apparently we do not grasp what our fate will be if we go on with this madness. I speak plainly, but I intend to touch upon that topic no further.
The speech of the right hon. Gentleman as regards its technicalities was, I am sure, of great interest to the Committee. I was somewhat interested to hear his left-handed attack upon the great principle of Free Trade, to which he owes his seat in this House, and for jettisoning which he is apparently excusing himself. He used an argument which was continually used during the War by certain organs of the Press in trying, quite honestly, to persuade the country that tariffs are the best thing for the country. He said that at the beginning of the War we had to provide ourselves from abroad with certain necessary weapons and instruments for the use of our forces. We know that it was necessary by some arrangement to get in certain articles even after the War was declared. The right hon. Gentleman surprised me, with
my knowledge of the subject from bitter experience, when ho said that we obtained our fuses from Germany. I did not know that before. It was a dreadful state of affairs. He did not mention periscopes for our submarines—an atrocious state of affairs. Even those were not manufactured here. We had also to get binoculars. Therefore, he said, we must in future have protective tariffs. Nothing of the sort. That accusation should have been directed against the General Staff before the War. They were the people who should have seen to it. They were to blame. Optical glasses for gunsights and periscopes for our submarines are not matters in respect of which we can blame the Government of the day, except that they arc responsible for the War Staff. They are matters for the War Staff. The War Staff should have protected the key industries in the sense that those key industries really constitute munitions of war for this country. The argument is sometimes used that corsets are necessary for the young women who have done such excellent work in the shell factories in this country and that, therefore, as they are necessary for munitions of war, we ought not to be dependent on French corsets. We are told that they must be protected for that reason as a matter of high strategy. I hope we will not blame the lack of optical glasses, periscopes, and fuses on our well-tried system of Free Trade in the past, but that the responsibility will be put on the right shoulders— those of the General Staff, who failed to make the proper preparation for war.
With regard to the sale of the assets of the Ministry of Munitions, there are certain things which the Minister for War says we cannot use to any useful purpose. He tells us of surplus guns, shells, and poison gas, and says that these things are to be sent abroad to our Allies. But there are certain other articles of great value in the possession of the Ministry, such as cloth, which could be converted for use by civilians. It is excellent Army cloth. There are also petrol, boots, and a great many other things which could be used equally well for civil as for war purposes. I hope some estimate will be given to the House of the amount of public money we are expending in sending these articles abroad—articles which we could make use of in this country. I quite admit we cannot make use of the guns and shells, but in regard to the other articles it would be interesting to know what it is costing to send them abroad. We have more tanks
than we know what to do with. They apparently are being shipped to Russia They are heavy things and take up a lot of freightage. If there is one thing we are short of it is freightage space. That shortage is keeping up prices more than anything else, and if you are going to use our shipping to send these articles abroad, I think it would be well to know what this policy is costing us. What, for instance, is it costing us to send the stores of the "Cordon Sanitaire" abroad? That brings me to one little point which afforded me considerable amusement, and that was the linen question. I will only deal with one aspect of that question. We are told that the Bolsheviks arc responsible for the present high price of linen, because they have stopped the export of flax from Russia, We are glad to know that Peace is going to be signed soon. We cannot blame our German enemies, and so we are forced back to blame the Bolsheviks. We are told by the right hon. Gentleman that they are responsible for the high prices of linen. We cannot accept that view. Flax formerly came from Russia through the Baltic and the Black Sea. The Turks and the Germans during the War have had command of the exits from the Black Sea. The Germans have also commanded the Baltic. Now, the only other routes through which flax could be exported were Kola and Vladivostok; but it has been impossible to get flax out from those places because the railways were monopolisd for the War. Therefore the export of flax from Russia to this country practically ceased as soon as war was declared and long before either the first or the second revolution. There is plenty of flax in Russia now, and they would be very glad to let us have it at knock-out prices. If we could only take shipping over there we could get excellent flax and hides, in exchange for tobacco and boots for example, at wonderfully low prices, and, so far from the Bolsheviks preventing the export, they would be only too ready to let us have these things. I hope the right hon. Gentleman, when he comes to reply, will deal with these various points.

Sir ASHTON LISTER: I venture to intervene in Debate for the first time since I have been a Member of this House because the subject which has been talked about is one with which I have a personal acquaintance. Although I have been here since the commencement of this Parliament, I have not listened to any speech which afforded me greater pleasure than
that which we had just now from the Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions. I think every Member of this House desires to be fair, and, in my opinion, it would be most unfair, in dealing with a matter of this kind, if we did not do justice—bare justice—to the Prime Minister for his action as Minister of Munitions. I give place to no one in my desire for retrenchment, but I must say that when the Prime Minister came down to Bristol, as the first Minister of Munitions, called a public meeting and issued invitations to everyone in the engineering trade in the West of England he simply caused a revolution. He inspired us, and from that day in the West of England we turned our attention to supplying what were the vital needs of our Army. I should feel myself wanting in courage if I did not state that in my opinion, had it not been for the intervention of the Minister of Munitions of that day, had it not been for his great imagination and his courage in doing away with and discarding all conventional systems of buying ammunition, we should not now have had the Germans willing to sign peace.
With regard to the prices paid for munitions, am in a position to know at first-hand that the Ministry of Munitions have not paid a farthing more than they were bound to. Take the case of primers. A large contract was given to a firm at the price of 4s. 6d. each, but within a very short time that price was reduced by the Minister of Munitions to l0½d., at which figure between 20,000,000 and 30,000,000 were manufactured. Thus it is clear that at that Department we had men who were determined to spend the money of the nation to the best possible advantage. I should like to say a word or two about the national factories. In many cases these factories are converted buildings. There was one in the city of Bristol. It was bought for about £6,000. Probably £2,000 was spent upon it. It sold the other day for £18,000. I wish all the cases were like that. There was another in my own county, the county of Gloucester. It was a great filling factory near Gloucester. It was a building put up as cheaply as possible. Not a penny was spent on it more than was absolutely necessary, and when the factory was closed the manager of it, a Government official, was given the very highest position in one of our biggest industrial engineering concerns—a proof that the Ministry acted wisely in the selec-
tion of their managers. With regard to the Disposal Board, I am engaged both as a large manufacturer and as a merchant in machinery, doing business in a great many parts of the world, and I can only say this, that I congratulate the Disposal Board on the splendid prices they are getting. With regard to the costing of this Department, I am satisfied that it saved the Ministry of Munitions many millions of pounds by placing it in a position to say to any manufacturer who demanded exorbitant terms that if he was not prepared to supply at the prices offered they would take over his factory and run it themselves or pay cost prices. I hope the policy adopted by this Department will be followed in other Departments of the Government in future.
With regard to massed production, I think it will be satisfactory to everyone in this country to know what has occurred in that regard. We have lost an immense amount of money. During the War we have probably spent all the savings of a hundred years. Never mind, we have won the War. We must forget all that. We must turn over a fresh leaf. We must manufacture and export more goods. Let us have a bigger turnover. Let us pay our people good wages and see to it that we do not restrict production. The lessons that we have learned during this War through the Ministry of Munitions and through taking over the large factories in this country will enable us to compete in the world's markets in the future better than we could before the War. Massed production has taught us how to produce cheaply. I mentioned just now that an article contracted for at 4s. 6d. was afterwards produced at a profit at 10½d. Higher wages were paid and the sole reason for the difference was that a better system of production was adopted. Standardisation will be the making of this country when we once settle down to work again. There is no country in the world that has better engineers, either operative or inventive, than this country, and if we look after our own industries and see to it that we do not restrict production, I am quite, sure that at no distant date we shall be able to repair the ravages of war. If we do, we shall have to thank the Ministry of Munitions for giving firms opportunities for making thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions of one article they never dreamed of making before. I congratulate the Ministry. It is all very well to alter our
opinions now that the War is over and Germany has succumbed. We have been through the fire and have come out of it. Do not let us spend our time on recriminations, but rather in reconstructing our country, producing goods better and cheaper than we did before, and then the time will soon come when we shall be able to look at our financial prospects with more satisfaction than we can at the present time.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of MUNITIONS (Mr. James Hope): The Committee as a whole will wish to congratulate the hon. Member who has just spoken on his first speech in this House. I trust it will be by no means his last. Appreciative as I am on general grounds of the merits of the speech, I am not less appreciative of it because of the fact that it gives me nothing to which to reply. I come to the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy). Into the questions of policy, such as the fiscal policy and our relations generally with the de facto Government of Russia, I do not follow him, but I am bound to correct him on two matters of fact. First, he said that we were asking for £185,000,000. If he will look at the Estimates he will see that what we are asking for really is nothing at all. What we are asking for, nominally, is £l,000. It is quite true that the expenditure for the year is adumbrated at £185,000,000, but then there are receipts equally for £185,000,000. The truth is that there are large balances carried over both on the debit and credit side from the last financial year, and, just as we have to pay very large sums in respect of commitments entered into long before, so we shall get very large receipts from the surplus goods we have. As a matter of fact, although, for a technical reason which I need not enter into, the receipts are estimated at a certain sum for the purpose of bringing the vote before the House, the receipts will in all human probability, and I am not sure they have not already proved to be so, be very much greater. We have to pay the debts incurred before and realise the assets we have acquired before. One word about flax. Whatever be the reason, it is the fact that up to the time of the Bolshevist revolution we did, not without difficulty or risk or heavy rates of insurance, get flax from Russia through Archangel. but from the time the Bolshevist revolution
came to pass we ceased to get it. The main hope of our getting it from the old sources with safety and cheapness will be the complete restoration of order in the Baltic provinces, which are the main sources of flax supply. The hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. S. Holmes) has spoken about oil. Our information entirely concurs with his as to the exaggerated accounts that have been given of the ill effects of the oil workings in the neighbourhood. A good deal of damage has been caused by the accounts of petrol blasting the hedgerows and the like. With regard to refining, I am informed that it is proposed that the refining shall not be done in the neighbourhood at all, but that it should be done in Scotland.

Mr. HOLMES: Are you going to run a pipe-line from Derbyshire to Scotland?

Mr. HOPE: No, a pipe-line will not be run, but the refining will have to be done at the refineries in Scotland. With regard to the British Smelting Company I am sorry the hon. Member did not give notice. It is one of an infinity of contracts and transactions, and 1 cannot carry the present position in my mind at this moment. If the hon. Member wishes for further information, we will let him know what is the exact position now. When there are thousands of contracts still unliquidated, he cannot expect me to be apprised of the exact position of that contract at this moment. Something has been said about linen by various people.

Mr. HOLMES: Will the hon. Gentleman say something with reference to oil.

Mr. HOPE: That subject has been alluded to by another speaker, and I have made a note of it. I will come to it in a moment. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Duncairn Division of Belfast (Sir E. Carson) said a few words as to the relations of the Ministry to the Belfast linen manufacturers. I may say at once, in answer to what he said, that we have no evidence whatever that any undue influence was used by Belfast manufacturers to prevent normal buyers in the trade from tendering for the surplus linen which we had in such large quantities. The whole history of the transaction is very simple. Negotiations took place with, from the point of view of the Ministry, unsatisfactory results. The retailers
would not take it in any quantities. The original manufacturers, though they made offers perfectly bond fide, did not come up to what the advisers of the Ministry thought was the proper price, and when at last, after long negotiations, a buyer did come forward who was willing to pay an adequate price, absorb the whole of the stock and pay a price far greater than had been offered, it was felt it was only good business to close with that offer. That is really the beginning and the end and all there is to be said about it. The hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain W. Benn) raised various points, among others that of oil, to which the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire has also alluded. The difficulties to which both hon. Members alluded have been fully present to the minds of the Government, the legal question involved and the question of policy alike. It is not a matter upon which the Department, as a Department, can take action. It raises too big issues to be decided in any one Department. The Government as a whole are considering it and are about to appoint a strong Committee to report upon policy and the means of carrying it out. The matter has gone beyond us, and, until action is taken by the Government as a whole, I fear that I am not in a position to answer the questions that have been put.
7.0 P.M
The hon. and gallant Member for Leith raised a point as to the position of the Ministry with regard to motor cars used by other Departments. The position of the Ministry is simply this: If the other Departments convince the Treasury that they are entitled to the official use of a certain number of motor cars, the Ministry of Munitions supplies them. The Ministry of Munitions are not the arbiters in the matter; the Treasury is the arbiter in the matter. It is the business of the other Departments to satisfy the Treasury that they require a certain number of motor cars for official use. When they have satisfied the Treasury, they come to us and we provide them. As will be seen by an answer given by the Leader of the House the other day, the whole matter is under revision, and the Committee may be assured that any abuses there may have been in the unrestricted use of these cars will very shortly be checked. I may say with regard to our own cars that at the Ministry of Munitions we do not assign them to individuals. We have a pool of them for the general use of the
officers of the Ministry. We, too, have to justify our use of them to the Treasury. The hon. and gallant Member for Leith also raised the question as to the manufacture of medals. We have taken that over at the request of the War Office. A Department has been set up at Woolwich, and the manufacture will begin in the course of a few months. It is a new liability of the Ministry, and has been undertaken at the request of the War-Office. With regard to the Ministry of Supply Bill, the object of that Bill is to get rid in the future of the unlimited competition between different Departments in the same market. Where you had different Departments drawing upon the same market and competing with one another with public funds for the same goods, of course it was extremely harmful to the efficiency of the public service as a whole. The experience gained during the War leads us to hope that it will not be allowed to be pursued in future. As to details of the Supply Bill—when it can be introduced, and its precise extent—that, of course, is not a Departmental matter, but a matter for the Government as a whole, therefore I must defer any further remarks upon that Bill until it has been actually introduced. Various criticisms have been made as to the national factories and other enterprises of the Ministry not having been conducted on proper commercial lines. These enterprises, at the time when they had to be set on foot, were not started and were not conducted with a commercial object at all. They were started and conducted with only one object, that was the winning of the War. Judged from that point of view, I think we may look back upon them with very hearty national satisfaction. Of course, a different standard of criticism must now be applied. We quite recognise that the old excuse, which was a very genuine excuse, that it had to be done in a hurry under the strain of the terrific national crisis, will not hold good now. We shall have to justify our expenditure on policy and on detail alike. I trust that when next year my right hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Acland) comes to review some of our transactions, he will find there is very little to criticise. In the time through which we have passed supply was our great aim. Supply was obtained, and by the action of the Ministry we have been led to the great result announced to us this morning.

Mr. BIGLAND: The Parliamentary Secretary has disclosed to us many things which have been kept secret until the happy time has come when peace is with us, and we may talk of some of the things which the Ministry of Munitions did in the past three or four years. I should like to say a word or two as to the splendid work which has been done by the Ministry with regard to the Propellants Department. I was appointed Assistant-Director of that Department in January, 1916, and one of the triumphs of what was accomplished at that time was the securing for munition purposes of the glycerine required in the preparation of cordite. We were in a very difficult position in that our demand for glycerine was double our home production and the Ministry of Munitions at that time had made a purchase from all the producers in England for the period of the War at £59 for the crude and £87 for the dynamite quality. When the extra quantity was wanted we found the markets of the world had gone up, in some cases from £120 to £200 a ton, but we were able to continue to supply the War Office with their cordite at a price from which the glycerine did not advance. That was done by the action taken by the Minister of Munitions in requesting the India Office and the Colonial Office to send cables to every part of the British Empire that oil seeds and nuts containing glycerine should not be exported outside the Empire unless the buyers undertook in writing to deliver the glycerine contents at the British Government's price. That simple action worked marvels. From all parts of the world there came these demands for oils produced within the British Empire, and when it was found that they could not be obtained unless the buyer was willing to send back the glycerine to Great Britain at the British Government's price, we found time after time that the necessity of the world to obtain these raw materials was so great that they were willing to fall in line with our demand, and by that means several rather strange things came to light. One was that all the whale fisheries in the world had to come to the Colonial Office for a licence to fish in the Antarctic Ocean, because none of them could fish without a land station and the Colonial Office, governing South Georgia, and having a certain amount of control in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and all the countries where land stations were possible, had instituted a system of licence and the
Ministry of Munitions was clever enough to see that by writing across the licence the further condition that during the period of the War, in consideration of the British Government apportioning them coal and stores to carry on their industry, they must bring the whole of the oil to this country in order that we might get the glycerine for our cordite. All the Norwegian and other fishermen fell inline with the demands of the British Government and in 1916 we received the enormous quantity of 100,000 barrels of whale oil, 10 per cent. of which was glycerine, and by that means and by many other drastic-measures imposed on neutral countries we obtained our glycerine at hall the price we could have got it in many other countries in the world.
I might give the instance of the great steel trusts of the United States, which wanted palm oil to carry on the manufacture of tin plates. They requested that they should have 12,000 tons during the year, and we informed them that they could not have any palm oil unless they sent the glycerine back. The result of the negotiations was that they bought glycerine in Spain, in the Argentine and in other countries, and paid as high as £210 a ton for the glycerine and delivered it to the Ministry of Munitions at the price of £87, which to my mind was a triumph of the possibilities and resources of the British. Empire and the fact that those resources were so urgently wanted by other countries in the world. In Holland they have a great industry of candle-making, and they could not make the candles without palm oil from West Africa and tallow from Australia, and we imposed the condition that if they wished to continue their candle industry they must return the whole of the glycerine to the United Kingdom at the British Government's price. After difficult negotiations they bowed the knee and accepted the inevitable, and we obtained thousands of tons of glycerine from Holland from the very fact that we were the sole providers of the raw-material that they required. So through the action of the Ministry of Munitions and their foresight in this matter we saved this country, I might almost say, millions of pounds in utilising the raw materials that we have within the Empire for war purposes. It is so easy to criticise Government Departments, and there are so few who tell the good things they have done during the War, that I felt I should like to say there are many cases where the
foresight and acumen of officials in the Ministry of Munitions have done wonders in securing for us necessities for the War and have done their part in bringing about the magnificent position in which we find ourselves to-day.

Colonel YATE: I listened with some interest to the Financial Secretary's statement about the use of motor cars, and I should like to tell him a little anecdote I heard the other day. There was a disabled officer working in one of the offices. His leg gave him a good deal of trouble, and he went to the head of his office and asked if he might take one of the cars he saw lying idle to the place where his leg was fitted to try to get case. "No," was the reply, "the orders of the Department are so strict that you cannot possibly use it." As a. matter of fact, on the next day seventeen of these pooled motor cars were put under orders to convey members of the Department to the Derby.

Mr. KELLAWAY: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman referring to the Ministry of Munitions?

Colonel YATE: I will not mention the Department. I do not want to give names. I only mention it as an instance of what is going on in the use of Government motor cars. It was told me as a fact. My hon. Friend says he is inquiring into the use of motor cars.

Mr. HOPE: No; I said the Leader of the House said the Treasury, which is the authority in these matters, is inquiring into it.

Mr. REMER: I should like to refer to the Disposal Board. I have a peculiar knowledge of it because very recently I was asked to act as chairman of one of the advisory councils to the Board, and therefore have some first-hand knowledge as to how they have conducted their work. It is work of most extraordinary difficulty. If timber could come in for such treatment as linen has got we should be very thankful indeed. I think the Government has made a most excellent bargain and one which shows great credit to the Disposal Board. It has to face the question of an enormous stock such as no merchant, manufacturer, or dealer could possibly handle. In the matter of timber it is frightening the market out of its wits, because they do not know exactly what the Government is going to do. They do not know
whether the market is going to be flooded and prices brought down to a very low level. A great deal of caution has to be exercised in order that it shall be put discreetly and wisely on the market. I am sure in a far greater sense this must have been the principle which animated the Government in the linen question, because if they had put it on the market in an indiscreet way it would probably have ruined the manufacturers for many years to come. To read articles which have appeared in certain newspapers one would think it was quite an easy thing for the Government to put the linen on the market and there by obtain the profits which are going to be obtained, as it is said, by Mr. Martin. The possibility, in my opinion a. very acute one, that Mr. Martin might make a loss does not seem to enter into anyone's mind. In order to put this linen, or any other good's, on the market you would have to set up a new Department to start, with. You would probably have to have a very large staff of people going round to sell it and a very large number of people to attend to the clerical side of it, with the result that instead of hotels and museums being released these places would be retained for a very great length of time. The difficulties that I have experienced is that there are too many officials who are too anxious to keep hold of their jobs and do not want to dispose of the material they have on hand. I think the kind of bargain which has been made with Mr. Martin is a most excellent kind of bargain, in order that you may get rid of the material in a very large amount. I am sure the proper way to dispose of these stores is for the Government to cut the loss in the quickest possible way. It is very much easier, and 1 think any business man will agree that it is best to make your sales in one large amount than to make them in several small ones. If the material has been sold at too low a rate it is better that it should be sold in that way, because it is the easiest way for the Government to handle the matter
We have heard something about the compensation which is paid to manufacturers for the loss of their contracts. That is also a question upon which I have some first hand experience, because my firm had a contract in existence when the Armistice was signed, and they were compensated for the loss of that contract. We would much rather have gone on with the contract. We are landed with a very large amount of stock which is very little use for
anything else, and I would willingly pay back to the Government the compensation we have received if they would allow us to complete our contract. One hon. Member has stated in criticism of the Department that the Ministry of Munitions have paid too much for their materials and for their contracts. A relation of mine, who is at the heart of a large manufactory for machine tools, has told me that in the year prior to the formation of the Ministry of Munitions his firm made a profit of £40,000. In the year which followed the formation of the Ministry of Munitions they made a loss of £5,000, and in the year following that they made a profit of £2,000. It seems to me that these figures are quite conclusive as to the efficacy of the control which the Ministry of Munitions have had over the manufacturers.
The hon. Member for Leith (Captain Wedgwood Benn) made some observations which seemed to me to favour the question of centralised buying, and I noticed that in the Ways and Communications Bill there is a Clause which deals with the same thing. The mind of the Government seems to be in favour of centralised buying. I do not know whether all the buying for all the different Departments is to come through the Ministry of Supply, but I would like to say a word in strenuous opposition to anything of the kind, because I think it is bad. It is a very good thing in theory but it does not work out in practice. The great firm of Vickers, probably the greatest industrial firm in this country, have several works in various parts, such as Barrow and Sheffield, and they have works near London. They do not do all their buying from one office in London. Barrow buys materials from Barrow, Sheffield buys materials from Sheffield, and so on. That is absolutely right. If you have a centralised place to buy in you draw the manufacturers from all over the country to London to buy their goods in London, with the result that the manufacturer either has to appoint an agent in London to attend to his business or he has to have a London office. That is bad, because London is not the centre of manufacturing, and it is also bad because all these people are brought to London, and here, again, we have the hotel problem. It is one of the causes of the hotel problem that so many people have to come to London to do business which previously was done in other places.
There is another matter on which I have asked several questions which have been answered by the Under-Secretary for Air, but which practically comes under the Ministry of Munitions, and that is, the use of cyprus wood in aeroplanes. Cyprus was used for aeroplanes against all the expert advice that has ever been given to the Government, and after a very short time it had to be stopped, because pilots had been killed. That cost the country £250,000 of money at least. It has been admitted, in answer to questions, that it cost the Government £250,000, and I think it cost a great deal more. Moreover, this use of cyprus took up, at a very critical time, a great deal of valuable tonnage which might have been used for other purposes. The official who made that blunder against all the advice that was given is still in the employ of the Ministry of Munitions. If this question is to be properly tackled, you must have real expert opinion, and not a professor. The official in question is a professor and not a timber expert. If you are to have proper expert advice on these questions you must have timber experts and other experts to advise you.

Major NEWMAN: I think it was in 1915 that the then Minister of Munitions, the present Prime Minister, asked the Government to appoint what subsequently became the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic). I want to ask the present Minister of Munitions if he is responsible for the working of that Central Control Board!

The CHAIRMAN: That does not come under this Vote. There is a separate Vote-for that Department.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported To-morrow.

Committee to sit again To-morrow.

SUPPLY.

STANDING COMMITTEE C. [2ND JUNE.]

Resolutions reported,
1 "That a sum, not exceeding £28,632, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Offices of the House of Lords.
2. That a sum, not exceeding £231,774, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on
the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Offices of the House of Commons.
3. That a sum, not exceeding £19,845, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the War Cabinet.
4. That a sum, not exceeding £107,519, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and other Expenses in the Department of His Majesty's Treasury and Subordinate Departments, including Expenses in respect of Advances under the Light Railways Act, 1896.
5. That a sum, not exceeding —10,777 (including a Supplementary sum of £3,000), be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.
6. That a sum, not exceeding £55,000, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for a Grant to the Interim Forestry Authority.
7. That a sum, not exceeding £19,619, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Charity Commission for England and Wales.
8. That a sum, not exceeding £20,825, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of the Government Chemist.
9. That a sum, not exceeding £29,059, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Civil Service Commission.
10. That a sum, not exceeding £1,282, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Conciliation and Arbitration Board for Government Employés.
11. That a sum, not exceeding £63,030, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of the Comptroller and Auditor-General.
12. That a sum, not exceeding £19,074, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Registry of Friendly Societies.

Resolutions agreed to.

SUPPLY— [19TH MAY].

MINISTRY OF SHIPPING.

Resolution reported,
That a sum, not exceeding £597,203, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will coma in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Ministry of Shipping.

Motion made, and Question proposed,.
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: In reference to this matter, I should like to get some information from the hon. and gallant Member(Colonel Leslie Wilson) who represents the Ministry of Shipping. Our shipping position at the present moment is unsatisfactory. Seven million tons of British shipping have been sunk, and it is essential that we should do our utmost and that the Government should help in every way to see that our shipping gets on its legs again and remains pre-eminent in the world among the shipping-of maritime nations. We must first and last of all depend on the sea. I hope that this will be realised, and that the Mercantile Marine will be recognised as an essential part of the strength of our Navy. The Ministry of Shipping is, I believe, in a transition stage. There are many in this country who feel that the Ministry ought to be kept on permanently in some form or other, possibly as the Ministry of Marine, for the better fostering and control of our Mercantile Marine. When the Estimates were last taken I believe that the matter was still sub judice, and I would like now to ask if any decision has been taken upon it?

Lieut.-Colonel Sir F. HALL: I would like to impress upon my hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Wilson) the necessity of taking steps to expedite the building of the ships that were contracted for by the Government. My hon. and gallant Friend may say that the Government have got rid of their contracts. But I think that if the Government would take the matter in hand and get in touch with the builders and use the same persuasive powers that they used up to the time they passed over the contracts for those ships to other hands, it would help very much indeed, because everybody who has inquired into this subject of the shortage of shipping at the present time knows how traffic in all parts of the world is hung up. An enor-
mous amount of our tonnage has been used for the conveyance of troops and raw materials, with the result that an enormous quantity of stuff in many foreign ports, that was to have been exported, has been held up. I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend will look carefully into the matter and see if he cannot do something to expedite the placing of a large amount of tonnage on the water in the next few months. If he can do this it will be greatly appreciated by members of the shipping fraternity and by all the people of the country.

Major NEWMAN: I desire to draw the attention of the Ministry of Shipping to the great shortage of shipping between England and Ireland at the present moment. There are three main lines of steamers. There is the line that carries the mails between Holyhead and Kings-town, there are the London and North-Western Railway's boats between Holyhead and the North Wall, and there is another route worked by the Great Western Railway between Fishguard in South Wales and Rosslare in the county of Wexford. All those lines had serious losses during the War. The Mail Packet Company lost two of their boats, the "Leinster'' last October and the "Connaught." The London and North-Western Company also had serious Josses. The Rosslare and Fishguard service, I think, lost all their boats except one, and at present they are only operating one boat. Then the House should remember that there is in Ireland at the present moment a fairly large garrison, and large numbers of soldiers, when they get their leave, are constantly crossing backwards and forwards between Ireland, England and Scotland. The result is a congestion, which is dangerous, on board the mail boats. I have not travelled recently on the Fishguard and Rosslare route. I have travelled recently only by the mail boats and the North Wall boats, and I wish I could put before the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel Wilson) exactly what happens on board those boats. They are so congested that in the first-class saloon you have officers lying on the floor because they cannot get anywhere else to lay their heads. In the second-class and third-class sections the same thing prevails even to a worse degree. There is hardly sitting-room even, and undoubtedly if there was any accident there would be great loss of life.
I know that the Ministry of Shipping cannot produce extra ships at once, but they might do something temporarily to relieve this great congestion. They might perhaps lend the Mail Packet Company a boat, or perhaps two boats. They might lend the London and North-Western Company a boat. At any rate, they might do something to get on its legs again the Fishguard and Rosslare service, which for a time was suspended altogether, and which is now a very bad service and is operating only one boat. The service from Fishguard to Rosslare used to be as good as that from Holyhead to Kingstown, but now in point of time it is very bad indeed. The journey from where. I live in the South of Ireland to London, viá Rosslare and Fishguard, which used to take two hours shorter than going round by Dublin, now takes nearly four hours longer. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman could do something which could set this Fishguard and Rosslare service going again with a full service of four boats it would relieve congestion greatly, because people like myself and others who live, say, in Tipperary, Waterford, or Cork, or other Southern Irish counties, instead of doing as they do now, travelling from Holyhead to Kingstown or Dublin and down to Cork, will resume their old pre-war habit of going from Paddington to Fishguard, and thence to Rosslare, and so on to Cork and these other places. I do not know what else the Ministry of Shipping could do to relieve congestion, but I think that they might try to co-ordinate to a much greater extent the services between Holyhead and Dublin with the service from Holyhead and Kingstown.
At present the mail starts from Euston at 8.20, and arrives at Kingstown the next morning somewhere about 6 o'clock, and there are trains to take passengers to all parts of Ireland, North, West, and South. Then about three-quarters of an hour later, somewhere about 9 o'clock, there is another train from Euston, which runs in connection with the North Wall boat, which arrives in Dublin about an hour and three-quarters after the mail arrives in Kingstown. If I travel by the boat which goes to the North Wall and arrives at, say, half-past eight, then I find myself stranded. I cannot get on to the South of Ireland except by waiting several hours in Dublin. The same applied to the traffic to the North and West of Ireland, and travellers, instead of arriving at their destination at one o'clock, arc hung up until
about six, seven, or eight o'clock in the evening, if they get any train at all. Would not it be possible to co-ordinate the service of these two lines to a much greater extent? Might we not have one boat departing at a certain hour, and the other boat a half or a quarter of an hour afterwards, with the result that there would not be this tremendous congestion by the two lines? If one boat was so full that it could not take any more passengers, then the passengers left behind would automatically go by the other boat. At present you arrive at Holyhead and cannot get on board a boat at all. Your boat is too full, and will not take you, and you were left in Holyhead for eight or nine hours. If we had a second boat going soon after the mail boat, the passengers left over from one boat could be taken on the other, and then, on arriving in Ireland, they would not miss their train to different parts of the country. I wrote to the manager of the London and North-Western Company in Dublin asking what he could do. He gave me courteous but cold comfort. He told me that there was very little possibility at present, with restricted shipping and great congestion of traffic, of doing very much; but it struck me, from the tone of his letter, that if he got perhaps a suggestion from the Ministry of Shipping as to the closer co-ordination of his line and that of the Mail Packet line, something might be done, and if something like this could be done to relieve the present congestion, discomfort, and danger of cross-channel traffic between England and Ireland it would be a great boon to the travelling public.

Mr. REMER: I desire to bring before the House the practice which has been in operation since the War began of British shippers insisting on freights being prepaid before goods leave port. This matter has been causing a great deal of inconvenience and trouble, and is of serious moment to the traders of this country. It is exercising a very bad influence upon the trade of the country generally. It is also having a bad influence on exchange. The question which arises obviously to one's mind is this: When traders buy goods for importation into this country they have to pay for them in actual credit over in America, with the result that freights have to go to America before the steamer leaves New York. As we are told that it is of very great moment that credit should not go to America more than is necessary, I
would like the Ministry of Shipping carefully to consider the making of a regulation whereby freights must not be paid in New York but must be paid, as was the practice in pre-war days, on the arrival of the goods in this country. The present practice came into operation during the War for the reason that, owing to the risk of a ship being lost through enemy action, they could insure their freights at a better rate.

Mr. HURD: The hon. and gallant Gentleman who represents the Ministry of Shipping would, if I may say so, do a great service by making a statement bearing on the recent trouble amongst Canadian troops at the Witley and Epsom Camps. Those outbreaks have arisen, as I understand, because of a deep sense of grievance. These Canadian soldiers—nobody will doubt it—are amongst the most gallant men in the Empire. They have done splendid service, but here they are resting in these camps in comparative idleness from day to day, and are kept in this country while they see American troops: returning to their homes at a very much greater pace. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that the delay in the return to their home is due to the action of the Ministry of Shipping. If it is not so, I am sure the representative of the Ministry of Shipping will do a great service if he will say so and also if he will state what is the cause of the more rapid repatriation of the Americans. Between 11th June and 21st June no single Canadian got away. It is said to be due to labour strikes, but such difficulties do not seem to have impeded the return of the American troops. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman could make an explanation which would cover these points he would be helping to allay a great cause of unrest.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of SHIPPING (Colonel Leslie Wilson): I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy) that the Ministry of Shipping does not need to be reminded in any way of the very great importance that the Mercantle Marine has on the whole future progress of this country, and I can also inform him that we realise to the full that launchings are not taking place as rapidly as we had hoped. As I said when speaking on this Vote in Committee, it was anticipated that at the present rate of launching we should put into the sea this year only
1,000,000 tons. We hoped at the beginning of the year that we should launch at least 2,000,000 tons, but I cannot hold out any hope that we shall do so. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dulwich (Sir F. Hall) suggested that the Ministry of Shipping should retain the contracts which they originally held. The Ministry does not hold any contracts now for any ships on the slips. It has disposed of all its contracts, and the only ships owned by the Government are ships actually in the water at the present moment.

Sir F. HALL: But the Ministry of Shipping had entered into contracts with builders for building standard ships which have since, by arrangement with another party, been taken over and distributed amongst various owners.

Colonel WILSON: That is quite correct. The Ministry has disposed of its contracts, and even if it held them I do not see that the launching of these ships would be hastened in any way. The reasons for the decrease in the number of anticipated launchings and for the existing shortage of tonnage—are numerous. In the first place, there has been a very large amount of delay in British and in foreign ports solely in consequence of labour troubles, with the necessary corollary that there has been severe congestion at the ports. Another reason undoubtedly has been the shortage of coal and the threatened coal strike had a very serious effect on the reconditioning of ships, because we had to prepare for any eventuality that might take place had such a strike occurred. Then, of course, there was the strike of ship repairers, which lasted for over two months. That seriously delayed the reconditioning of ships and also, naturally, stopped the ships which would have returned to their ordinary trade. Then there has been large military demands to be met, for Russia, for India; there has been the necessity to take a large amount of wheat to India and largely increased cereal demands for Europe. Those are only some of the reasons. The main reason, one of the main reasons, why there is not the necessary amount of tonnage on the sea apart from launchings is owing to the serious delays which have taken place in the various ship-repairing yards mainly because of the threatened coal strike and labour troubles in the yards.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hull asked whether it was possible
to make any statement as to the formation of a Ministry of Marine. I am not in a position to make any statement. As he said, the Ministry of Shipping is in a transitional stage. What is to be the future control of the Mercantile Marine in this country is a question which has not been decided by the Government at the present time, and I am therefore not in a position to answer him on the point. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Finchley (Major Newman) had alluded to a question which he knows well is causing a considerable amount of interest, and that is the question of the congestion on the Irish route. I may say the Ministry has done everything in its power in order to relieve this congestion. The hon. and gallant Member has put forward some very valuable suggestions, and I wish he had put them forward when I saw him at the Ministry. I will certainly convey these suggestions to my right hon. Friend the Controller of Shipping, and we will communicate them to the authorities in Ireland and endeavour to come to some such arrangement as ho suggests. At the same time I must say that while there is undoubtedly discomfort in travelling in Ireland, it is not, after all, any more discomfort than is being felt by practically everyone who travels on the sea at the present time. Those who have to travel to South Africa, to Australia and to India have to travel under conditions which they would have thought intolerable in pre-war days. That is simply the result of a great shortage of passsenger shipping and it is prevalent on every route throughout the world.

Major NEWMAN: May I ask whether the House will be told something about the Fishguard-Rosslare route? is there any chance of its getting going again? If they got two services a day there would not be the congestion. Why is that route so neglected with only one ship running, and the Government making no effort to get the route into proper working condition?

Colonel WILSON: Every effort is being made, and we are very anxious to get the route into proper pre-war working order, as the congestion is mainly caused now because everyone will travel by the Holyhead and Kingstown route instead of going by the southern route. Even if they would use to the fullest extent that one ship on the Fishguard route it would considerably relieve the congestion. The hon. and gallant Member said you can do
something. What are we to do? He said, "Lend us some boats." Where are we to get the ships from? We have not spare passenger boats which we can put on any line where there is congestion. There is congestion everywhere. We have the same demands coming from the West of Scotland and from the North of Scotland. We are doing everything we can to return the ships to their proper and normal trade. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Frome (Mr. Hurd) for raising the question of the trouble which has occurred in the camps he indicated. I would like to inform the House that by the 30thof June no less than 87.2 per cent. of the Canadian troops will have embarked for Canada. I think it is only right for me to say also, on behalf of the Ministry I represent, that we have carried out, not only what we said we would carry out in regard to the repatriation of Canadian troops, but more than that. Certainly with regard to the last two or three months we have carried more troops than the Canadian authorities suggested that we should carry. I think I may say that we have met practically every request that has been put forward. There have been, it is true, certain delays in those particular days between 11th June and 21st June. They were delays which were due to labour troubles—small labour troubles such as that in connection with the tugboats, but all these things mean delay. We were behind our programme for this month on 11th June, but I am informed that by the end of June we shall have caught up the whole programme for the month, and shall have fulfilled all the requests made by the Canadian military authorities for that month. I am sure it is incorrect to say that the American troops are being repatriated at a greater rate than the Canadians.

Mr. HURD: The Canadians believe it.

Colonel WILSON: It is not correct. I know they are not being repatriated in British ships. We have repatriated 134,500 United States troops in British ships, whereas we shall have embarked by 30th June 238,000 Canadians—that is, 87.2 per cent. of the total number to be repatriated.

Mr. HURD: Are not British ships being used from France to America?

8.0 P.M.

Colonel WILSON: No British ships have been used during the last two months for the repatriation of American
troops which the Canadians were willing to take. As my hon. Friend probably knows, there have been placed at the disposal of the Canadian troops the monster ships which were originally at the disposal of the Americans. The Ministry of Shipping was so anxious that there should be no delay in the repatriation of the Canadian troops that the placing of the monster ships at the disposal of the Canadian troops was done at a considerable risk, because Halifax is not a very suitable port for these large vessels to go into. It is really the very worst time of the year for those monster ships to approach Halifax and it has been done at considerable risk in order that there should be as rapid repatriation of Canadian troops as possible. The only other question was that raised by the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Remer) as to freights being paid beforehand. That is a matter which rests between the shipowner and the man who is paying for the freight and is not. really a matter in which the Ministry has any authority whatever.

Mr. REMER: My only object in raising it was to point out that it was bad for the country on the question of exchange.

Colonel WILSON: I will bring the hon. Gentleman's suggestion to the notice of the shipowners' representatives at the Ministry, and I am sure that they will realise its importance.

Sir J. HARMOOD-BANNER: With regard to the hon. and gallant Member's explanation as to the removal of some Canadian troops, I understood that they were suddenly told that they were not going by a ship which was to have been available. Like everybody else, they want to get home as quickly as possible, and that announcement gave rise to the trouble. I understood the Parliamentary Secretary to put the whole blame of the shipping trouble on coal shortage, but I cannot say that I entirely agree with that explanation. I happened to be talking recently to a colliery proprietor, who informed me that there was a considerable surplus of bunker coal as there was not sufficient demand for it, and therefore it seems rather contradictory to say that all these troubles are due to coal shortage. I think the hon. and gallant Member will also have noticed that the Coal Controller withdrew the other day the prohibition on the export of coal from the Humber.
and the reply to an inquiry as to why that was done was that in the Yorkshire district there was a surplus of coal. I only bring this matter up to show that while it is very easy to throw on coal the whole blame—

Colonel WILSON: I said that one of the reasons why there was not sufficient tonnage was owing to the threatened coal strike.

Sir J. HARMOOD-BANNER: I understood the hon. and gallant Member to refer also to the question of coal trouble in preparing the ships as well. A great many of the statements brought forward by Ministers and generally in this House in regard to coal are not founded on fact. There is a fair quantity of coal, and there could be far more coal if the miners would only work properly.

Question put, and agreed to.

SUPPLY.

STANDING COMMITTEE C. [13TH MAY.]

Resolutions reported,
1. "That a sum not exceeding £54,600, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment dining the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for Expenditure in respect of Houses of Parliament Buildings.
2. That a sum not exceeding £39,000, be granted lo His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day. of March, 1920, for Expenditure in respect of Miscellaneous Legal Buildings.
3. That a sum not exceeding £75,400, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for Expenditure in respect of Art and Science Buildings, Great Britain.
4. That a sum not exceeding £69,000, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for Expenditure in respect of Diplomatic and Consular Buildings, and for the maintenance of certain Cemeteries Abroad.

First Resolution read a second time.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.

Mr. C. WHITE: There are one or two words of explanation which I should like as to this matter. This is the Vote which was reduced by £4,800 providing for a bath and lift for the Lord Chancellor's resi-
dence and the decoration of the rooms. I am not going to discuss the policy which led up to the Committee refusing to pass this Estimate. I know it has been usual in the past to propose to reduce the salary of a Minister by £100 or some nominal sum, but I did not think that was the best way, and therefore, having regard to the fact that we had a lecture from the Chancellor of Exchequer on economy, I proposed in Committee that those items to which I have referred should be eliminated. But it came to the notice of the Committee that although it refused to pass this large sum of £4,800, yet a large amount of that had been expended. It may appear to be a parochial point of view to take, but what I want to know is what is the good of bringing Estimates before us to consider if the work is already partly done. This was new work, and, as I saw myself, some of it was done before being submitted to the Committee. I understand that now the Lord Chancellor has refused to come to the House, and something has been said about that, but I am not going to discuss that question. I ask now how is this money expended to be paid, and how is it to be passed by Parliament or the Treasury when it has been refused by the Committee upstairs. I was told by the first Commissioner of Works upstairs that I only brought this forward as a way of gaining some cheap popularity. I care nothing for popularity or notoriety or persecution. I have had some of all three, and I am quite impervious to their effects. My desire was to see economy, and having taken part for a quarter of a century in public life in the county of Derby, it did not appear to me to be a businesslike way of doing things, to present an estimate with the work partly done. I also considered it was unnecessary to make the Lord Chancellor a present of £1,000 to £1,500 per year, and when I moved the rejection of these items, the Motion was carried by the votes of all parties in the House, and was not a party vote. I ask now who is to pay for the work that is partly done?

The FIRST COMMISSION of WORKS (Sir Alfred Mond): This Vote is only reduced, and it is not proposed to put back on the Report stage the items to which the hon. Member has referred. What has been spent will appear on a future date in a Supplementary Estimate in order to enable the Government to meet
the obligations which have been incurred. I do not want to reopen the question, which has been discussed at great length, but most Members of the House are well aware of the practice of anticipating Votes, and that the practice is one which is common form, and without which machinery would break down. Unless that course had been followed, and if the premises were to be used for a Lord Chancellor's residence, we would not have been able to get it through this Session of Parliament at all and we could not have begun the work until August, while the intention was that the Lord Chancellor should occupy the residence during this Session. On that ground the Treasury approved of the anticipation of the Estimate. As regards the actual sum expended, when that is ascertained it will have to be put in a Supplementary Estimate.

Sir F. HALL: I should like to draw attention to the inconvenience to which Members are put in regard to their secretaries. In pre-war days the rooms were divided between the male secretaries and the lady secretaries. At the prsent time there is a small room which is set apart for both male and female secretaries, and telephone communication is not even provided. My right hon. Friend may think this is a trivial matter, but I can assure him it is one which has been discussed a good deal by many Members. If the right hon. Gentleman would look into the various rooms at his disposal in the Souse, and if he could find some improvement for the accommodation of the secretaries, then I am sure the Members of the House, who bring secretaries here, would be grateful to him. I hope he will not overlook the fact, also, that telephonic communication would be a great convenience. There is another matter to which I wish to refer. It is now, I think, some eight or nine years ago since we had a discussion in this House about the repairs to the roof of Westminster Hall and we were then informed that it was anticipated that the work would only last some twelve or eighteen months. I readily appreciate the fact that during the past four or five years the various Departments have utilised their labour, as they should have done, on work of greater importance than even the renovation of the roof in this hall. But I think we should have some guidance now as to when we may expect the removal of the scaffolding, which is a great impediment to Members using the rooms of Westminster Hall.
It being a quarter past Eight of the clock, and leave having been given to move the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 10, further Proceeding; was postponed, without Question put.

TRADE AND COMMERCE.

RESTRICTIONS ON IMPORTS.

Mr. G. TERRELL: I beg to move,
That this House do now adjourn." 
I make this Motion in order that the House may consider a subject of very great importance—namely, that the uncertainty as to the future economic policy of the country, in the absence of definite steps for the prevention of dumping and the protection of key industries which were promised at the recent General Election is a matter of grave concern to the country, and calls for immediate action by the Government. We have exercised a good deal of pressure on the Government from time to time to endeavour to get them to declare their policy. In July of last year I had the privilege of introducing a very important deputation of manufacturers to the Prime Minister and to the Leader of the House, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. This deputation consisted of some 200 heads of important manufacturing firms, and they pointed out that without a declaration of policy they were unable to prepare for peace, and that unless when peace came their preparations were all made there would be great unemployment in the country, and consequently a great amount of unrest and discontent. That, unfortunately, has proved to be the case. But the Prime Minister spoke in reply to the deputation, and I am only going to quote a very few words of his speech, because it seems to me that they are very important. He said:
During the War we have undoubtedly discovered that there were industries in this country which were essential, not merely from the commercial point of view, but from that of national defence and security.
Then he went on to say that under no conditions, and whatever it cost, should we let these industries down in the future. The point there to which I wish to call the attention of the House was his declaration that there were industries which were essential from the commercial point of view. I am sorry to say that on that occasion we were unable to get very much
more satisfaction, but we continued to press, and at a later date the famous letter which was written by the Prime Minister to the present Leader of the House was published, and that is the letter dated 2nd November of last year, which contains a very definite statement as to the intentions of the Prime Minister and the Government in regard to our future economic policy. I am again going to ask the indulgence of the House while I read a few lines from that letter. He said:
As regards other aspects of this (economic) problem, I am prepared to say that the key industries on which the life of the nation depends must be preserved. I am prepared to say also that in order to keep up the present standard of production and develop it to the utmost extent possible, it is necessary that security should be given against unfair competition to which our industries have been in the past subjected by the dumping of goods below the actual cost of production. Beyond this, I should say that we must face all these questions with new eyes, without regard to pre-war views or pre-war speeches.
And then he said:
The object which we have in view is to increase to the greatest possible extent production in the country, so that no man or woman may want and that all who do an honest day's work may have comfort for themselves and for their children. In order to secure better production and better distribution, I shall look at every problem simply from the point of view of what is the best method of securing the objects at which we are aiming, without regard to theoretical opinions about Free Trade or Tariff Reform.
In conclusion he stated:
I am prepared at once to agree that the election should be contested on the basis of this letter.
That was the last General Election, and, as we all know, that election was fought on the basis of that letter. In the constituencies there were candidates who advocated Free Trade, and nearly all of them lost their seats or failed to get elected, and a very strong party numerically were returned to this House pledged to carry out the economic policy which is contained in that letter. After the Armistice we found that the Board of Trade were releasing the war restrictions as to importations of foreign goods, and as representing a very large and influential body of manufacturers I took a deputation to the late President of the Board of Trade and urged upon him that some considerable measure of protection must be arranged to protect our industries during the period of reconstruction. As a result of that deputation, an Advisory Council on Imports was set up. My right hon.
Friend opposite shakes his head, but I was in very close touch at the time with the then President of the Board of Trade, and I think I am right in saying that it was the result of that deputation that that Council was set up. That obviously was only a temporary arrangement to carry us over the period of transition from war to peace. We pressed and urged the Government to declare its policy, and there was a Debate in this House on the 25th March last, when the Leader of the House stated that there was an Anti-Dumping Bill in print, and he led us to believe that that would shortly be introduced. Speaking on the general question of the protection of essential industries, he said the Prime Minister's letter, referring to the letter which I have just quoted of 2nd November, made the general lines of Government policy quite plain, and that the declaration would be carried out in the letter and in the spirit. That, as far as it went, was quite satisfactory, but we could never see the Anti-Dumping Bill. We could never get any information as to when this policy of the preservation, or protection, or whatever you like to call it, of key industries would be introduced. Questions were addressed to the Leader of the House over and over again, and the reply always was that he could add nothing—that the Government were doing, all they could to hasten definite proposals. That was a question which I put to the Leader of the House on the 12th May. I put a similar question to my right hon. Friend who is representing him here to-day, and I received a similar reply.
There is an amount of vagueness, of indecision, which, as everyone must know, is most damaging to trade, because no one can launch out in business, no one can develop his business, unless he knows what the policy of the Government and of the country is going to be. I think that is abundantly clear. With regard to the Imports Committee, to which I have already referred, I should like to quote the words which were uttered by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade at a meeting of that body held on the 2nd June last. I am quoting from the official report in the "Board of Trade Journal" He told them that, in the opinion of the Government, the work which they had done had proved to be of the greatest value to British trade and had helped substantially to secure employment throughout the country. I believe it is a fact. He also informed them that, whilst they had
been working out a transitional policy, others had been working out a permanent policy, and just as that was the concluding meeting of the Council, he hoped that later in the day he would attend the concluding meeting of those who had been working out in detail the proposals for a permanent policy. That was on the 2nd June. Now we are near the end of June. All these restrictions as to imports cease to have effect on 1st September. When I put a question to my right hon. Friend to-day I was unable to get any reply from him at all. All that I could get was that they are considering the matter, and had not made up their minds yet.
Really, I think the House knows that this is a grave and serious matter. It has very far-reaching consequences, and the time has come when one must press the Government vigorously to disclose their policy, to put it fully before the House, and not to be afraid of it, because I am afraid that they are afraid of their own policy. We want to know what it is they propose to do. Manufacturers want to know, and I think they have a right to know, and it is most unfair that they should have this policy all bottled up since the 2nd June, and no disclosure made. Dumping can begin on 1st September; there is nothing to stop it. Here we are getting towards the end of the Session. In a. few weeks we shall be in August, when the House will adjourn probably for a considerable period. The Anti-Dumping Bill means legislation. How are we to get it through? Time is running on. There are a number of big and important Bills with which this House has to deal. The experience of today is what we have gone through for some years past, because for the last three years we have been pressing the Government to declare its post-war policy, and it is always, "We are going to do it; we are considering it," or "We hope to do it before Easter," or "We hope to do it before Whitsuntide." Last year they said, "We hope to do it before the Autumn Recess," and then, "We hope to do it immediately after the Recess." They have never done it; they are always going to do it. They are full of good intentions which they never seem able to perform.
It is perfectly clear that if any importance at all is to be given to the Report of the Departmental Committees which have been considering this problem from the early days of the War, we must have a system of Protection, and of general pro-
tection for all the industries of the country which need protection. The Reports of the Departmental Committees of the Board of Trade—quite a number of them —have all reported in the same direction with perhaps one exception—the Textile Committee, who were in favour of the continuance of Free Trade, but they wanted an export duty put on all jute which was exported from India to all other countries outside the British Empire. In other respects, I think they wanted a continuance of Free Trade. All the other Committees, I think I am right in saying, reported strongly in favour of Protection. There was a Balfour of Burleigh Committee. They reported in favour of a measure of Protection. Then my right hon. Friend will be familiar with the Report of the Engineering Trades Committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction. That Report was dated December of last year. Different Sub-committees reported as to the development of new industries. One Subcommittee for one industry said that some form of Protection was necessary, and then another Sub-committee said there was nothing doing in that particular industry until the post-war fiscal policy was announced. Another Sub-committee said the industry could not expand in face of serious foreign competition. And so all through the Report the different Sub-committees urged upon the Government the importance of a definite system of protection of all trades and manufactures.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Sir Edwin Cornwall): The hon. Member must bear in mind that we arc not discussing a general system of protection for all trades. That would be out of order. The matter of importance mentioned in the Motion is the prevention of dumping and the protection of key industries. Any discussion beyond that will not be in order.

Mr. TERRELL: The term "key industry" is a little vague and indefinite.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Member obtained the leave of the House because it was definite. It is better to keep it definite.

Mr. TERRELL: Certainly, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I will just deal with the question of key industries, because it is in a, sense true that some will take the view that a key industry is a very small industry. On the other hand, every manufacturer I have come across says that his particular industry is a key industry, and my infor-
mation is that when the term "key industry" is examined it will be found that really the key industry is an essential industry, and that all our other industries are more or less essential. There is a rumour that in the schemes my right hon. Friend is working out he is taking a very limited view of this question, and that he is regarding as key industries only a very few industries, such as optical and chemical glasses, hosiery, knitting needles, magnetos, dyes, and a few industries of that character. If that is the line on which he is proceeding I have no hesitation in telling him at once that it is wholly insufficient, and I am certain that he will find it will not to be accepted by this House. What we mean by key industries is all industries—any industry which needs protection. I do not apologise for having been a Protectionist. I have always advocated Protection. I have always advocated a tariff as a means of protection. I do so to-day. I am afraid there are some hon. Members of this House who take a different view of the letter to which I have referred, of 2nd November last. Their view is that by subscribing to that letter, and by accepting the coupon, and consequently obtaining their seats—[HON. MEMBERS: "No, no !"]—that they are still entitled to regard themselves as Free Traders. I am afraid they will be disappointed. Some, I know, regard the coupon as a scrap of paper, but those who accepted it accepted it oil the basis of that letter, which is a declaration of the intention of the Government to protect all necessary and essential industries. We have some information to-day that the United States of America proposes to withdraw from the Supreme Economic Council. That means, as I understand it, a new campaign for the markets of the world, including the British market. It is not going to help us very much in the difficulties and dangers which we have before us if we are going to buy from the United States goods which we can make perfectly well for ourselves.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I would again remind the hon. Member that the question before us is the definite steps necessary to prevent dumping, together with the protection of key industries. It is quite obvious that to discuss tariffs generally and the steps taken by America with regard to them would be out of order, and would carry the matter beyond what is definite and urgent as defined by the Motion. The Motion of the hon. Member
specifically deals with dumping and key industries. He must keep to that and not wander into a general discussion on tariffs. This he will see would give to other hon. Members the right to enter into a general discussion of tariffs.

Mr. TERRELL: I do not want to disagree with your ruling, but I do submit that what has happened to-day, and the announcement which has been made concerning the United States, is really a question which makes the urgency of this matter. Here we are going to have a totally different system to take the place of our present trading relations. The United States step out, or contemplate stepping out, from the suggested control of the International Council, and our markets and our country will be exposed to American competition not only in general produce in a wider sense, but there will also be competition against our key industries. I venture to suggest to-you, Sir, that that really makes the urgency of this Resolution. Again, I raised the question of the United States withdrawal at Question Time to-day, and that also makes the urgency of this matter; for it would appear to me to be necessary for the Government to at once take definite action for the protection of our industries.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The Motion is that the Government take action in regard to dumping and key industries. I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman, in making his speech can, if he tries, confine his remarks to these two questions.

Mr. TERRELL: I have endeavoured to keep my observations strictly within the limit of the Motion. When I speak of our industries, of course, I mean our key industries. The Government are shirting the challenge. They seem to be afraid to lose the support of a few of their friends who, I venture to think, in spite of the coupon, are very unreliable Free Traders. We are rapidly drawing to the end of the Session. There is very little time for legislation. There is every indication. that whatever legislation dealing with the matter is introduced will meet with very vigorous opposition. One has an illustration of what is likely to happen in what happened on the proposal for Imperial Preference in the Budget. I do not know what the Government propose to do, but I believe the matter is really desperately urgent. A big representative meeting of
manufacturers was held two or three weeks ago, when certain resolutions, following very much on the lines of the resolution I have submitted now, were passed. The request was made to the Prime Minister to receive a deputation, so that these manufacturers could urge their case personally. We all know the right hon. Gentleman has been engaged in France. No doubt it is a little difficult now for him to receive a deputation of the kind. Much as I regret having to harass the Government in any way, this matter is urgent. You cannot indefinitely delay it. You are now face to face with the prospect of the whole English market being flooded with foreign goods of every kind, with manufactures being paralysed, with a great amount of unemployment and vast sums being paid in unemployment benefit. What is going to happen in the coming months? Are you going to reduce your unemployment? Are you going to find work for our own people, our demobilised soldiers and sailors? If you flood the market with foreign produce, is not that a matter of urgency? Is it not a matter to which the Government should give most anxious consideration, instead of hesitating, shuffling, and putting it off, saying there is "nothing further," or "we are thinking, we are consulting this, that, or the other Committee." The time has come when we must press, the Government. There is only one way of doing this. That is by pressing in this House, by Members pressing them to come to a decision and declare their policy, and tell us definitely how they propose to carry that policy into effect.

Mr. BIGLAND: The fact that Mr. Speaker allowed the Motion for the Adjournment shows that in his mind the subject is one of urgency. It is certainly a fateful moment for this country when it pronounces its new economic policy. We have been waiting very patiently because we knew of the difficulties of the Government on these matters, but the Leader of the House stated plainly that we should have a Government pronouncement long before the date fixed which was the 1st of September, and we have been hoping that that announcement would not be unduly delayed. We now find ourselves in this awful predicament. After the Armistice a system of prohibition was continued with regard to imports of foreign manufactured goods into this country. To
my mind a system of prohibition is the very worst that could possibly exist, because under it the British manufacturers, having no competition from abroad, easily raise their prices, and when the demand for more wages comes they raise their prices again, and under that system there is no healthy competition with the outside world. What we feel to-day is that the Government must bring this system of prohibition which exists to-day with regard to many articles usually imported to a stop, and some other system must be devised.
My hon. Friend who introduced this Motion said that manufacturers were anxiously waiting because the amount of employment they think they can give will depend very much on what that pronouncement is. We have been told from the Chair that we must keep this Debate within the limits of dumping and key industries. Dumping is a very wide question, and the difficulty the Government has been in while considering it during the last three months is where to put their finger upon the definition of dumping, and where to limit the key industries. With regard to the imports of foreign manufactured wooden ware, I was talking to a party recently with reference to the manufacture of windows and doors for our new dwellings, and he said if there was Protection he was prepared to spend £100,000 in new machinery which would give a great amount of employment, and he would import the timber in a rough state and manufacture windows and doors as cheaply as any Swedish house. That is what he wants to know. If this new system is to be adopted he will spend his £100,000. The paper manufacturers say that dumping is going on with foreign-made paper. With regard to tonnage they say that if we import all raw wood pulp and no finished paper we increase the tonnage of our British shipping, and increase labour to our people here, and the paper they maintain will be the same cost to the consumer, and the new industries that will be built up, of which paper is the key industry, will be built up under the system which I hope the Government are about to announce. The paper manufacturers want to know, and they want a statement on this question. This is a matter of laying out millions of pounds if we are going to manufacture all the paper we use, and it will mean the expenditure of millions here in buildings and machinery. These
gentlemen say to me, What are we to do? We wish to increase the volume of employment and give more work."
The extraordinary position of the Government is that during this system of prohibition of imports during the War and since the rate of wages has increased very considerably in this country, and legitimately so to a large extent. In order to preserve the edifice that has been built up under the system of prohibition, the Government has to face the responsibility of enabling manufacturers to continue the payment of the present high rate of wages. We are all watching and thinking how this can be done. We had to-day, when we listened to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions, a magnificent oration as to the possibilities of English workmen and engineers and English scientists. He said that during the War the work which had been done gave proof beyond doubt that our craftsmen were the best in the world, that the inventive power of our engineers was unequalled, and that the ability in research of our chemists was also unrivalled. This is perfectly true, and this will be shown if the Government will formulate an economic policy under which these qualities can be brought out. They were not brought out in the pre-war days.
I am a great advocate of advanced education, and in my own town we have some excellent schools where technical education was given. I shall never forget one student who came to me after a three years' course at one of these schools, and ho said to me, "I have done what you wish me to do; I have taken this course of scientific training, and now I can get no more wages than I got before." The position which the late Prime Minister referred to in his speech at Leeds last week was that we must go on with advanced education, and in that way we should prevent dumping. To my mind it is the other way round. If you legislate and create conditions to prevent dumping, then you will get young men to go in for scientific training, and you will also get the men who will spend money to develop industries in this country. There are people who argue that if this policy were pursued it would rather retard initiative work in this country. As one who has travelled in many protected countries in the world, I say that the effect of Protection is the initiation of new ideas and the develop-
ment of employment rather than the other way, where you have men of ability at the head of your business undertakings.
With regard to dumping I want to say that I have studied it anxiously and carefully, and if I were the head of the Board of Trade I should utterly fail to find any possibility of passing a measure to prevent dumping unless I started with a tariff. I have considered this question of the key industries—there are very few people in the House, I think, who would oppose a certain measure of Protection for the key industries—and I have got some figures which are rather interesting with regard to what has happened during the War. The Deputy-Minister of Munitions told us this afternoon how wonderfully our people during the four years of war have shown their ability even in regard to many things which we never manufactured at all, to produce supplied almost equal to pre-war days. I will only quote one instance. Take a drug, phenacetin. We imported the whole from Germany in 1912, and the German price to us was 2s. 9d. per lb. [An HON. MEMBER: "Is that a key industry?"] Yes, all these drugs are from coal tar, and coal tar is admittedly a key industry. I think Mr. Deputy-Speaker will admit that coal tar and dyes are among the key industries and among the most important. Phenacetin is one of the by-products which we miss if we let our coal tar go to Germany to be manufactured. We have done wonders. The price of phenacetin which was 2s. 9d. advanced to 90s. We have now got the price down again to 10s. 6d., but if the Germans come in again and sell at 2s. 6d. all the work that we have done will go to the wind.
9.0 P.M.
I think my right hon. Friend at the Board of Trade will recognise that there must be a period of protection for certain of these industries. All the House will agree that certain industries will undoubtedly receive protection, and I fail to see where the President of the Board of Trade can possibly draw the line between articles such as dyes and steel. Steel is undoubtedly a key industry of this country, and the position is very serious. The German mark has fallen from 1s. to 4½d., and, if the Germans produce their own coal, make their own iron and smelt their own steel, they will pay their labour in a coin which is only one-third of its pre-war value. If when they have produced their steel and their cutlery they bring it to their frontier and exchange it for gold, they will be able to sell it at such a price
that it will be dumping when it is landed in this country as against the steel produced here, and I say most emphatically that some action must be taken before the 1st September if we are to prevent what would be a disaster in this country, namely, the flooding of this country with cheap German steel goods. The inference is a strange one, and I am at a difficulty to say what line of action should be taken, because we cannot put an ordinary tariff against the dumping of something that is going to be produced at one-third of the cost of producing it here. If they pay their wages in a coin which instead of being worth 1s. is only worth 4½d., and they exchange the product into something based upon our currency, then Germany's disaster is going to make for her increased power to compete with us in certain lines. On the other hand, I admit that where she has to buy her raw material before she begins to manufacture her currency will be a great handicap against her export business, and she will not be able to export very largely articles the raw materials for which she must import. If from her own ore and her own coal and with her own labour she can manufacture steel, all kinds of cutlery, ironwork and steel goods, then she is going to unfairly compete with the British workman.
I call upon the Government to view that case with very careful thought. I do not see how we are going to guard against it, but something must be done. We must take some steps to prevent our market being flooded. It will be flooded with steel goods, and the more they sell the more money they will take back into their own country to employ more of their own men in the production. They will find that their financial position and currency will give them an advantage in competing with other markets. I was pleased with the discussion this afternoon because it showed how splendidly our workmen have worked, and the wonderful skill and power of our men. There is nothing to be afraid of there. There must, however, be established conditions under which those workmen are going to work. I desire above everything that the permanent high rate of wage shall be established in this country. Years and years ago as a young man I travelled much in the United States, and the one thing which grieved me more than anything
else was that the men that I employed in, Liverpool were only getting one-third the wages that men doing the same work in the United States received. I claim that there sources of our Empire are greater than those of the United States, and I claim that if any country in the world should be a high wage paying country Great Britain should be. I believe it is possible for us to make the conditions under which our men work such that they can enjoy these high wages. But, in my opinion, that can only be done by the Government giving the matter careful consideration and submitting to this House their conclusions how the dumping which will undoubtedly follow the removal of the present orders of prohibition can be prevented, and how these key industries can be safeguarded. I look forward with some hesitation and doubt, because I know that certain members of the Government are nervous as to how such measures can be produced. Neither a measure to deal with dumping nor a measure for the protection of key industries will be sufficient if kept within narrow cramped lines. This is a great issue and is of enormous importance and I press upon the Government that, at all events, within one month of to-day they make a statement of their carefully considered conclusions as to how the high wages now prevalent in this country can be maintained and how an increase of employment can also be kept up.

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Sir Auckland Geddes): I am sure what we have already seen in this Debate to-night will have convinced most of us that this subject, in which we are all profoundly interested, is really too vast and too important to be dealt with on such an occasion as this, and every Member of this House will agree that at least one whole day, and perhaps more, will be required adequately to discuss this very vital matter. It is quite impossible for a Motion relating to key industries and dumping to be thus debated. The very points just raised by my hon. Friend the-Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Bigland), in his most interesting speech, show that this is not a simple thing which is being discussed. We have to realise that this country stands, as it were, between two worlds —the almost bankrupt world of Europe and the very prosperous and wealthy world of America—and that between those two worlds and ourselves there are two sets of exchanges. The hon. Member who has just, sat down spoke of the mark and its ex-
change being worth something over four-pence. I think it by no means improbable that in a few weeks it may be worth about half that. But look across the Atlantic. We have got at the present moment an exchange at about 4.60. Does any hon. Member who has studied this question of the London and New York Exchange believe that it will stay in the neighbourhood of 4.60 unless it is artificially held there? It really is no good imagining that in one tariff system, even if we were all agreed, it is possible to deal with the position adequately. It is quite hopeless to imagine that a tariff, if it were adopted, would be of effect against dumping, let us say, in the case of a country whose exchange was in the relation which New York bears to London, and that exactly the same machinery would prevent dumping when the exchange was in the relation which Berlin bears to London. It is absolutely impossible to think that the trade policy of this country is going to be solved along any or either of the old lines which were so much discussed, without some change.
There is no question that this whole question of British trade policy is urgent, but until the Government is in a position really to see what the post-war position is it would be the height of folly to announce a policy and to label it permanent. It is much better for the whole country, for our manufacturers, and for other interests in the country, to realise that we are working on transitional lines, because we are passing through a transitional period. The quotation which my hon. Friend read from the Board of Trade journal with some remarks of mine dealing with imports, indicate, I think he will admit, that the Government had not been lacking in studying the trade situation and the trade policy of the country. He spoke of the Government changing. I know of no changes. He spoke of the Government hesitating. I know of no hesitation. The Government has adopted a perfectly plain policy during this transitional period; a policy known to every Member of this House; a policy avowedly based upon crude machinery, because there has been no time to refine it. The machinery may be crude, but just think for a moment what our position would be if we had not had a policy which included import restrictions. By this time there would have been across the Atlantic from America to these shores a great flow of articles which we do not really need, especially in the present state of things in this country, when everyone or
nearly everyone is spending as if there were no bottom to their purses—motor cars and other things that America is only too anxious to send would be coming over at the very time when our manufacturers cannot produce them. And that is not the only evil that would be caused, because the movement of non-essential things into this country would have pushed up the American exchange to a level it is difficult to imagine; the prices of food would have risen, also, to a level not easy to realise, and the price of raw cotton for Lancashire would have been I know not what.
The policy, therefore, that was followed was designed to meet the transitional period, but it was definitely announced in this House by me as it so happened, on the 10th March, that that policy would be reconsidered and reviewed before the 1st September. It has never ceased to be under reconsideration and review. It is most anxiously watched, and I have to say, without hesitation, that the trade policy followed by the Government, in spite of obvious defects which we have done our best to rectify, has, on the whole, been successful. Employment is spoken of as bad. There is unemployment, but it is extraordinarily small considering the mass of men who were thrown on to the labour market, considering the disorganisation of our industries at the time when that flood of men returned, and considering that many of the men that did come back are in what I may call the late trades. For example, in the building trade there are the slaters. Slaters do not lay foundations. In the export trades there are the merchants' warehousemen. You will find that we have in our unemployed at the present moment a mass of men who really belong to the later trades, whom it is impossible to expect will be employed at once, when the whole life and the whole activity of a great nation has been in suspense for between four and five years. During this time has there been any dumping? No. There has been no real dumping, at any rate, not to any extent, since the Armistice. There was one instance where it looked like it, but it was the dumping of raw material, if it was dumping at all, which we were very pleased to have dumped.
There is no possibility yet—I hope soon there will be in the best interests of the trade of the country—of announcing a definite policy, nor the date at which the definite policy, the permanent trade policy of the country, will come into operation.
It would have been extraordinarily unwise, in my opinion, on the part of the Government to have announced before this date what its permanent policy was to be, because obviously the permanent policy will not be the same as the transitional policy. To have announced a permanent policy while the transitional policy has still many months to run would only lead to greater disturbance and less confidence on the part of manufacturers than the knowledge that they have one system which is the only one they know, controlled by the Government to work upon. Not only that, to announce a permanent policy and to be quite unable to say on what date that permanent policy is to come into operation would surely be the height of folly. It is only to-day that we have learned that Peace is to be signed by Germany definitely. Until Peace is signed we might have been faced at any moment by a completely different situation in Europe, a situation in which there might have to be a wholesale reimposition of controls that had been removed. Would not that have been a hopeless thing to do after you had turned your manufacturers in the direction of working for a permanent policy? Would not that, as happened during the War owing to constant changes forced upon the Government by the military situation, have hampered and caused unnecessary loss? I think it would, and I believe it would have been right, if the Government had done that, for them to be blamed most severely for the action they had taken. So I say this: The Government has worked out in detail a permanent policy which it believes will best meet the situation which it expects when Peace is finally concluded. If my hon. Friend has heard rumours, he must not allow himself to believe that all rumour is true. The policy is worked out. Naturally there will have to be further discussions about it, but there is no delay. We are not waiting for a policy. The whole thing is in type, covering every line of policy, and ready as a plan against the situation which will arise. My own belief is that the best thing the Government can do is to keep the lock very tight on the box in which that plan lies until such time as it is right and proper in the interests of the country to bring it out. That time will come just so soon as we can see with reasonable clearness the approach of conditions which we may regard as fairly approximating to the new post-war normal.
Before I sit down 1 would refer to one point made by the Mover of this Motion when he said that the American Government had resigned from or was about to withdraw from the Supreme Economic Council, and that therefore this matter of the protection of key industries and the prevention of dumping was urgent. I cannot conceive what connection my hon. Friend imagines there is between the Supreme Economic Council and British key industries and the prevention of dumping into this country. There is absolutely no relation between the two of any sort or kind whatever. The Supreme Economic Council is dealing with such questions as supplies to the Allies, food for devastated areas, food now for the occupied areas in Germany and also for the unoccupied areas, and food and raw materials for the countries that have been shattered in Eastern Europe. What that has to do with British key industries and their protection and dumping into Britain and its prevention, I cannot conceive. I think there must be some complete misunderstanding as to what the Supreme Economic Council is. There is really now, I think, very little need for America to continue in the Supreme Economic Council, and if that be her belief now as I understand it is, well, probably the time has come for many of us to withdraw from the Supreme Economic Council as long as there is some co-ordinating machinery. The Supreme Economic Council consists of Ministers or persons representing them. The work of the Supreme Economic Council involves a considerable dislocation of the national work which rightly and properly belongs to each nation. The withdrawal from the Supreme Economic Council of any Power does not mean that it withdraws its interest from the problems with which the Supreme Economic Council deals, but merely that it uses, instead of a Ministerial machinery an official machinery to get at the same end. That is all. So that if my hon. Friend sees in this withdrawal of America from that Council some dreadful bogey that America is preparing to dump goods into this country, I can assure him that he is really not seeing that episode as it is. It is something quite different. 1 suggest once again that really this great question of the trade policy of Britain and the Empire would far bettor be discussed with all the advantages which accrue from discussion under the conditions of a set
Debate, and I can undertake to convey to the Leader of the House, if the House so desires, an expression of the House's wish that there should be a proper discussion of this subject.

Mr. TERRELL: The difficulty of the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion is this. He says he has a permanent trade policy locked up in a box and he is not going to let it out. We cannot discuss it until we see it.

Sir A. GEDDES: No, but there is a great deal of education required—I do not mean education for this House, but it is a matter of education for the country that there should be a Debate in this House on the trade position in which all the factors involved, such as these points which have been raised by the hon. Member (Mr. Bigland) about exchanges, are emphasised. The country as a whole does not understand them, and I believe a discussion covering the whole range would be of enormous use to the country, and, perhaps, oven—who knows—to the Government.

Mr. A. SHAW: I am sure the House is very much indebted to the hon. Member for having raised this Debate, for it has elicited an extremely useful statement from the right hon. Gentleman. I was associated at the Board of Trade with his predecessor, who is still a Member of this House, and I know with what infinite assiduity he applied himself, not only within recent months but during his whole term of office, to facing, so far as it was possible to do, the position which would be presented to us at the end of the War, and I can assure the hon. Member (Mr. Terrell)—and I feel certain that he knows it from his private conversations with the late President of the Board of Trade— that so far from this question being now solved in a hurry by the Government the right hon. Gentleman on the Treasury Bench has fallen heir to a very large body of expert opinion and advice, and a great body of detailed proposals made by his predecessor with the very able assistance which he possesses. I think one of the most useful phases of this Debate is the light which it throws upon the mind of the honest Protectionist. After all, the Prime Minister's letter lies at the root of the matter. The Motion is confined to key industries and to dumping—two very limited things. But we find before the hon. Member has gone very far that these limited things cover the whole field of
economic policy. That is just the sort of thing that Coalition Liberals were inclined for a moment to doubt at that critical time when they had to make a great decision. It was because they trusted the Prime Minister and knew he would never let them down, and knew he would never permit a construction of that kind to be put upon a clear bargain, that they supported the Government without betraying one iota of their Free Trade principles. Now the right hon. Gentleman presents us with this proposal that a key industry means a system of general protection for every industry which needs it. The hon. Gentleman assents, but I look for signs of assent from his supporters on this side. He said, when he was put to it, that a key industry is every industry which needs protection. Surely we have wandered very far from the basic facts on which the General Election was fought when key industries, whatever may have been the definition, were certainly never defined in that broad sense, and being so defined would never have formed the basis of a policy which would have received the support of any Liberal. I think when one hears at Question Time, day after day, without a word of protest from Coalition Liberals, the representatives of certain industries and interests putting pressure upon the President of the Board of Trade in order that they may get from the Government, under cover of these promises, protection for their own interests at the expense of the public, it is time some of us, who may be supposed by the public outside to be tarred by the same brush, put in a humble plea for the public. The ordinary consumer in this country is not having too cheerful a time of it and he is watching very carefully the trend of opinion of that large Unionist majority which he put into power at the General Election. Then we had the hon. Member's definition of dumping. We had a very clear definition in the letter from the Prime Minister to the Leader of the House. Dumping, the hon. Member said, means selling anything which competes on favourable terms in this market with what he and his friends sell.

Mr. TERRELL: I do not think I said anything of the sort.

Mr. SHAW:: I think that is not an unfair reading of the entire tenour from beginning to end of every remark which the hon. Member land his successor made. Dumping, as defined by the Prime
Minister, is quite different. The dumping to which the Prime Minister's policy was directed was very carefully defined indeed, and I notice that the hon. Member was careful not to say what that definition was. It was the sailing in this country of any article produced abroad at a price below the cost price in the country where it was produced.

Mr. TERRELL: The Prime Minister's letter merely said, "Below the cost of production." He did not say the cost of production in the country of origin. It meant the cost of production in this country.

Mr. SHAW: I must say the reading which the hon. Member puts upon that letter is one which attributes to the Prime Minister an amount of treachery which not even his worst enemy would ever have suggested. It would clearly be dishonest for a country to sell goods here below the cost of production in the country where they are produced because there can be only one deduction to be drawn from that, that we are confronted by a dangerous conspiracy, at immediate economic loss to the country that carries it on, to place the British market in a position of subservience and to stamp out British industry. That is an entirely different thing from saying, We are being hit by foreign competition because the foreigner is producing something at a lower price than we care to sell it to the British public. If that is the argument we shall be able to meet it at the proper time and in the proper manner. I join with my hon. Friend in wishing to see the policy which the Government have so carefully locked up in the box to which reference was made. I should like to know what has become of the Imports and Exports Bill, of which a, great deal was heard in the last Parliament. I should like to know whether that is to be produced or whether the policy is to proceed upon other lines. Meantime no one who knows the great complexity and the constantly changing character of the factors with which the right hon. Gentleman has to deal can complain that he is taking his time and is watching the trend of world events before committing this country to a policy which may very largely prove to be a permanent policy and which, therefore, may be a disastrous policy for the country. I would rather put up with the present inconveniences, grave as they are, than put pressure upon the Govern-
ment to put before the House a half-digested policy which may prove in the long run an extremely costly one for this country. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman opposite has approached the question of these Committees which are sitting from the proper point of view. These Committees, I suppose, are considering the protection of key industries. I am quite sure that the great majority of humble people in this country view with a good deal of suspicion Committees appointed to settle the future of British industries and of British fiscal policy which are in I think every case except one dominated by the very interests which are concerned.

Mr. TERRELL: These Committees are Departmental Committees appointed by the then President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Runciman), and since appointed by my right hon. Friend the present President. They consist of all parties.

Mr. SHAW: I am sorry that my hon. Friend feels disturbed by what I have said as to the composition of these Committees. The composition of these Committees involves this curious situation that they are the judges and the witnesses in their own cause, with regard at any rate to the majority of the Committee. Of course, there are precedents for that. We have had a Commission sitting at the other end of the corridor of a similar kind in which the judges were also the witnesses, and most able advocates of their own particular cause. The spectacle of that Commission and the spectacle of these Committees is not such as to commend that form of procedure to the mature judgment of the country. In these matters what we want above everything is impartiality. I am a Scotsman. My hon. Friend may differ from me on fiscal matters, but so far as Scottish national pride is concerned he cannot take away my feelings, and I would commend him to what the Scottish national poet said:
Where self the wavering balance holds Tis rarely right adjusted.
I think those sentiments apply with great cogency when Committees dominated by special interests are sitting to inquire into and advise as to what the future fiscal policy of the country should be.

Mr. ARTHUR MICHAEL SAMUEL: As a member of one of these Committees, I would like to say that the consumers are well represented on them. I have sat on
several of these Committees, and the consumers are represented by a first-class person in the representative of the Wholesale Co-operative Society, who are themselves one of the largest consumers in this country.

Mr. SHAW: If I was interested in any industry, and felt inclined to try to get the better of the country and the Government, I would not mind having an able antagonist on the Committee, provided that in every contingency that arose I possessed two votes and he had only one.

Mr. SAMUEL: That is not the proportion.

Mr. SHAW: I do not say that that is the proportion, but that is the effect. We have to look at this matter not from the point of view of one or two or a dozen or a score of interests, but from the point of view of the whole country, and I think, with the definition of key industries we have had to-night, that if pressure is to be put on the Government in that direction we may expect the Prime Minister, at no late date, to retire to the Welsh hills and make big magic, and in the ensuing convulsion a good many political features in the landscape will be found to have disappeared. I believe, if the Prime Minister adheres to his principles, he, like every Coalition Liberal, believes that a blow at our import trade such as the hon. Member and his Friends are seeking to deliver means inevitably a blow at our export trade, and an additional burden to the consumer. I do not want to deal with that at length, but I do think that the spectacle of the hon. Member and his Friends at a time like this putting forward preposterous proposals of this kind is almost intolerable. The position at the moment is that private enterprise and initiative in this country are fighting for their lives, and for the life of the community as a great progressive concern. What is the strongest argument which they can use? It is this, that private enterprise and initiative throughout the centuries in this country has built up the great fabric of commerce and industry which has stood secure against the four winds of heaven in face of the competition of the world. But if we are to consider as a key industry every inefficient industry which seeks to be bolstered up by tariffs; if that is to be the policy, then the consumer, the general public, and the Labour party—which I believe have a great future before them in this
country—will have something to say. Though I differ from the Labour party, I am willing to concede that they have a great future before them, and the hilarity which that announcement causes to my hon. Friend opposite shows how profoundly blind he is to the signs of the times in this country. I think it is a fact, but he does not think so, and therefore he is amused. I am quite as willing as he is to learn the lessons of the War. One lesson which he has learned, and I agree with him, is that there are certain industries for which special consideration must be taken. But there is one broad, overwhelming lesson which he has not learned, and which I doubt if he ever will learn, and that is the lesson that it required the finance of a Free Trade country to uphold our Allies throughout years of crisis, in which but for our help they and Europe would have succumbed to the tempest.

>Mr. REMER: I entirely disagree with almost every sentiment expressed by the turn. Member who has just sat down. I have looked up the records attaching to Members of this House, and 1 find that at the last election the hon. Member received the Coalition ticket. It seems to me that he ignores entirely the principle upon which the people of the country returned the present Government to power, when they decided that it was necessary for the country that we should prevent dumping and protect our key industries. He told us that the Prime Minister's letter was a very limited thing, something which was very trivial, which was really nothing, but he never told us his own definition of a key industry, and he did not give us his own definition of the meaning of the word "dumping." In my opinion, and, I think, in the opinion of any sane member of the British Empire, any industry which employs labour is of very necessity a key industry in this country. So far as the word "dumping" is concerned, if manufactured goods come into this country to be sold at less than the price at which they can be manufactured in this country, that is dumping, and they should be taxed and dealt with accordingly. The hon. Member has made play with sarcastic remarks about the composition of the Committee which is to advise the Board of Trade on the question of import restriction. From what we have heard the ideal committee from his point of view to advise on this question would be a committee nominated by the Cobden Club.

Mr. SHAW: No

Mr. REMER: Or somebody with Free Trade convictions beforehand. The hon. Member told us a great deal about people who were interested in the industries which were to be protected. I should very much prefer some one interested in the industry to someone who knows nothing about it. The proper people to decide a question of this kind are the people who manufacture the things and who know the difficulties with which they have to contend. If I am opposed to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock I am opposed still more to the speech of the President of the Board of Trade to which we have just listened. It is a deplorable speech because it fails to give us a permanent policy. There are two policies which are alternative for the protection of key industries and the prevention of dumping. One is, that we should have the policy of restriction which is at present in vogue. The second is that which has been touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham—a tariff on manufactured goods. Everyone of us who wishes to see manufactured goods, key industries, protected, and dumping stopped desires to do something not only to protect the industries which are already here, but to bring new industries to this country. Of my own knowledge there are new industries which are waiting to come here. But we can never get new industries to come to this country until we know definitely what is the permanent policy of this country. The policy of restriction which we have at present is a bad policy, and will not attract industries to this country. The only way in which we can attract industries is by dropping that policy and stating clearly that we, at some future date, are going to adopt a tariff on manufactured goods. I do not think it necessary to state what those tariffs are, but we should let our manufacturers know definitely that a tariff policy is going to be adopted.
There have been statements that dumping is going to be prevented by some kind of Bill enacting that goods may not be sold in this country at a price lower than the price of origin. I do not know what truth there is in these statements, but it would be absolutely impossible to carry out such a policy. The delay of the Government in declaring clearly their future economic policy is causing a great deal of harm to industry. It is not only affecting the so called capitalist or manufacturer, but it is also affecting very
seriously the labour conditions. I do not see how it is possible for manufacturers to go on paying the very high rate of wages at present existing unless some kind of tariff policy becomes the permanent policy of the country. The most glaring case of dumping which exists at the present time is that in reference to Japanese silk. That silk is at present being dumped into this country. It is made by people who are paid from 4d. to 11d. a day. How can our manufacturers at Macclesfield go on paying from 1s. 6d. to 1s. 9d. an hour when goods manufactured at that lower rate of wages are being dumped into this country. The nature of this particular trade is borne out by the fact that the two boom periods in this country were 1870–71, when the Franco-German War was being fought, and 1914–18. The silk industry in this country is doomed to destruction—it was nearly destroyed when the war broke out in 1914—unless there is some kind of protection. Here is another illustration. A great manufacturer in this country is prepared to put down plant costing close on £100,000, which will employ from 5,000 to 6,000 people, but he declines to go on until the Government have definitely come forward with an economic policy. I am quite convinced that, unless the Government come forward with a clear policy, there is the greatest danger ahead of this country. It is vitally necessary for the Government to make up their mind as to what they are going to do.

Sir A. WILLIAMSON: I only agree with the last speaker in one point. That is in regretting the speech of the President of the Board of Trade. I regret that speech because the right hon. Gentleman was unable to tell us that which the country has long looked for—that he was going to remove the restrictions, or a large portion of the restrictions, which have so hampered our trade at the present time. Until those restrictions are removed there is no chance of the bulk of prices falling, and the cost of living falling in this country. That is what we are longing for. Not the continuation of restrictions, but the removal of restrictions. When that box which contains this statement of policy is opened the large majority of the people of this country will hope that it will be found to contain a removal of the restrictions on trade which have hampered our trade up to the present time, and which if continued would destroy a great portion of it. It is very difficult in a Debate of this sort to distinguish key
industries from other industries. There is no doubt whatever that when the letter to which reference was made to-night was written there was left in the minds of the country very great doubt as to the interpretation of the words "key industry." Whether that was meant or not I do not know. Sometimes words are used that can cover two or three different meanings. For my part I should regard key industries as those upon which the safety of the country depends—such things as munitions of war which it would never do for us to be unable to produce for ourselves. Others who have spoken in this Debate evidently regard almost all our industries as key industries because they give employment to our people. It seems to me quite clear that those of us who have supported a coalition Government as the best instrument for carrying on the War and bringing back a satisfactory peace, which we are thankful to know has been accomplished, would not and could not follow the Government in a policy of protection, and I for one, make my position quite clear, as I think I have done before in this House, and as I did before I was elected by my Constituents, so that no doubt can exist.
Hon. Members have spoken to-night of the British market as if the British market was confined to these islands. This is a' great mistake. The British market is the world, and not the British Islands alone. What would be the effect of a policy of Protection upon our great overseas trade, the trade upon which in reality this country depends for its existence? There is no doubt whatever that Protection would raise prices. One speaker has spoken of the establishment of a factory for doors and windows. For what purpose is he waiting to establish this factory? He is waiting for a protective duty to be put on which will raise the price of the doors and windows. That is an example, and if that example be applied to everything else we manufacture, where will our position be in the international trade of the world? We have keen enough competition now. Competition in the South American markets, for example, between manufacturers in this country, in Belgium, Germany, and the United States, was very keen before the War. I can assure the House from personal experience that very often a very small difference decided whether the contract went to Great Britain or Belgium or the United States or Germany—a very small difference on a very large order. If
by any policy of Protection we are going to raise the cost of the articles which we are endeavouring to sell in these neutral markets, then the order will pass us and go to someone else. The future trade of our country does not lie in a great development of consumptive power within our island, but in the development of consumptive power by the great masses of people less civilised than our own. Africa, China, Asia—these are the places where there is a future for our trade and for growth, and if we are to cater for that trade and growth, it is essential that this country must produce cheaply. Therefore I hope that when the box which contains this valuable document is at length opened it will be found that the policy adopted by the Government is not that of placing restrictions or tariffs upon imports, but is that of freeing the trade o£this country, and of sweeping away restrictions that hitherto have hampered and are now hampering our export trade.

Mr. PENNEFATHER: The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken has put a very narrow construction on the term "key industry." May I remind the House of the actual words used by the Prime Minister in his letter. He said:
I am prepared to say that the key industries on which the life of the nation depends must be preserved.
My right hon. Friend appears to define "the life of then nation" as simply depending on munitions of war, but surely during peace the life of the nation depends upon the financial results of the industries of the country, and if we are to preserve our key industries—I will not go so far as my friend who moved this Resolution—we certainly are entitled to base ourselves on the words of the Prime Minister. I was very much astonished to hear the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade when he said that it would be extraordinarily unwise even now to make a statement on our economic policy. May I remind him that the hon. Member for Melton (Colonel Yate) by a question to the Leader of the House on 21st October asked when a statement would be made on our economic policy, and the answer he received was that such a statement would be made that week. Two days later I put a question down in regard to the most-favoured-nation Clause, and the answer I received was, that that point would also be made clear in the general statement
which is to be made on economic policy. On 24tn October the hon. and gallant Member for Melton again put a question as to when the statement would be made, and he received the reply that it would be made before the House adjourned for the recess. That was the recess immediately after last October, eight months ago. What I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman is this: If the Leader of the House with the consent of the Prime Minister was prepared to think it wise to make a general statement eight months ago, why should it be extraordinarily unwise for him to make such a statement to-day? I think that is a fair question to ask. I thoroughly agree with the Mover and Seconder in their view that this delay in making a general statement is extremely detrimental to the best interests of this nation, because it is impossible for the business men of this country—bethey manufacturers, merchants, or financiers to go full speed ahead while they have no idea as to national policy. I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that it might perhaps be better that these business men should not know. But surely the business men of this country should not be living in blinkers.

Sir A. GEDDES: You cannot define in a public statement between business men and the general public. I quite agree that it would be desirable if the business men could be told privately.

10.0 P.M.

Mr. PENNEFATHER: I cannot really follow the right hon. Gentleman in the very fine distinction he draws between the business man and the general public, because, after all, business men employ the public. The workers of this country we might call the general public, and they arc employed by the business men, and unless business men know what the policy of the Government is they cannot make ahead those plans which are going to find employment for the working classes. If you strike out the business men you also have to strike out the working men, and what is left of the general public? I do not think we can quite accept that. I maintain that this indecision and delay is extremely unfortunate from a national point of view, and the nation surely includes both the workman and the business man, as well as what my right hon. Friend calls the general public. Then my right hon. Friend went on to say that it was unwise perhaps
to make a general statement before the peace was signed, but in the next sentence he told us that the peace was signed today.

Sir A. GEDDES: No, no. I did not say that peace was signed, but that there was definite information that peace was going to be signed.

Mr. PENNEFATHER: May I ask this question, then: When peace is signed, will he make that definite statement of economic policy? The minute peace is signed will ho make such a definite statement which will fix the dates, so that business people in this country will know what our policy is to be from that time? I hope my right hon. Friend will respond to that very definite question which I have asked him. I hope, too, that my right hon. Friend, and the Government generally, do not underestimate the strength of the feeling on this point amongst business men. I have attended meetings of chambers of commerce where merchants and financiers have met together, and men who differ as widely as we do in this House, and some of whom may be Tariff' Reformers and some Free Traders, but on this point they are all agreed, and have been for many months past—namely, that it is essential to the prosperity of the country that the Government should make a definite statement on its policy. That is the one point of agreement amongst men who are what may be termed captains of industry, the men upon whom the recuperation which we all long for, and the reconstruction and increased production which we all desire, depend. They are unanimous on this point, and I would ask my right hon. Friend to go at least this far and tell us what is the policy of the Government in regard to increasing production. We all know that the expenses of this country arc enormous and likely to increase, and of the great burden of debt which we have to carry, and we all know there is only one way in which to carry that burden, not only in this country but throughout the Empire and that is by the increased production. What steps do the Government propose to take to encourage production or even to encourage the production of key industries?

Mr. SPEAKER: I would remind the hon. Member that leave was given to discuss "the prevention of dumping and the-protection of key industries."

Mr. PENNEFATHER: I beg your pardon if I have transgressed. I was speaking of key industries, and I will confine myself to production as far as key industries are concerned. What is their policy in regard to that? How are they to increase the production of our key industries? In saying that, I do not mean to quibble, as I have it on my notes, and it is not an afterthought. I would also ask, What is the policy as regards dumping? Surely on those two points, which are the two points under consideration, as you, Mr. Speaker, properly reminded me, it ought to be possible now when Peace if not actually signed is so near for the Government to give us, if not an absolutely definite cut-and-dried statement, at all events a general indication which will be a guide to the business men of this country as to what they may expect. I feel that this matter is one of such urgent and such definite importance that it deserves more than a mere pushing aside, and that it deserves now, or certainly in the very near future, some clear and definite statement on broad lines as to what the policy is which was promised to be revealed to us some eight months ago.

Mr. LYLE-SAMUEL: I am sure that the House has witnessed to-night almost as interesting a spectacle as has been afforded in its Parliamentary history. We have seen Member after Member stand up and invite the Government to declare itself in favour of a policy which one must brusquely call Protection, as one must call a policy of anti-dumping or a policy of limiting imports. One after another has been trying to extract from the President of the Board of Trade, who will not, I hope, be offended if I describe him as an avowed Protectionist, a promise which they have been seeking to get ever since this Parliament met, but I think the President of the Board of Trade has been too dexterous, and I am sure they are heartily disappointed. We are told the policy is all written out and typewritten, and that it is in a box and that the box is locked, and the right hon. Gentleman said he knew of no box as to which it was so important that it should have the advantage of a key being inserted. That may be described as a governmental key industry, and that is the method by which hon. Members are to be informed whether the policy of this Government is Protectionist or Free Trade. May I say that I think, in the name of common honesty, the very
least the Government must realise is that if all the traditions of this country are to be subverted and if we are to change from the policy which we have had for seventy years to the policy advocated by the hon. Member for Chippenham (Mr. G. Terrell), then it must be submitted to the country before it is adopted by this Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "It was!"] To say that it was is to imply that none of us engaged in the election except hon. Members in favour of this scheme. I went through the General Election. [An HON. MEMBERS: "With a coupon!"] Yes, with a coupon; and I was opposed by a Conservative protectionist and I beat him, having been asked whether I was a free trader and having declared myself to be a free trader. Let me refer to the Prime Minister's coupon. I attended that great meeting an the Central Hall when the Prime Minister's letter was distributed amongst us all, and while we were waiting for the proceedings to begin an organist beguiled us with various selections, and just when I got to that part; of the letter where the Prime Minister said he was in favour of Imperial Preference and antidumping the organist reached the very interesting strain, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot." "Auld acquaintance" is being revived to-night.
I quite agree with the President of the Board of Trade that this is no subject to discuss between a quarter-past eight and eleven o'clock. It is not a subject to discuss in a night, but is a subject that should be discussed in a week. It is a subject so grave that I venture to think no Member of this House would be doing his duty if he did not protest against any decision being come to by the Government until they have laid their proposals on the Table and until the House has had a week to discuss them. Dumping—what is dumping? Dumping is a foreigner doing business with you, but when you do business with a foreigner that is overseas commerce. When this War broke out we were the only nation in Europe with any real wealth, we wore the centre stone of the arch which supported the Allies. England was the centre of the financial arch which supported the burden of the War. From whence did England derive that wealth? From her capacity to dump into every market in the world. If you do not like dumping, I suppose you are not going to be allowed to dump. Other people will no more like you to dump on them than you like them to dump on you. This is the old
old story. We have argued this question of dumping most actively in this country from 1903, and it is not for us now to be taught by various hon. Gentlemen opposite what dumping means. We who belong to the school of thought of which I am a member believe that this country's doom is sealed if this country produces an Anti-Dumping Bill such as is desired by the hon. Member for Chippenham. An Anti-Dumping Bill would mean that this old country would go back to a fourth or a fifth-rate position in the world. The President of the Board of Trade said, a minute ago, in reply to an interruption, somebody objecting that he would not state his policy, that he agreed that business men could be told privately, and I should like to know what that means.

Sir A. GEDDES: I am sure my hon. Friend does not mean to misquote me. What my recollection of my words is, and what my intention certainly was, is this, that if it were possible, which it is not, to let anybody know in advance of the general statement on a matter of this sort, it is the business men, the big men, who have been called the captains of industry, who should be told first, but as it is not possible, and as such a thing could not be done, there could only be one form of announcement, and that is the complete announcement.

Mr. LYLE-SAMUEL: I think the right hon. Gentleman has left it exactly where it was, but I want the House to note the mentality behind our trade policy in this country to-day. Instead of this being a great free Parliament and we surely must be jealous of our traditions—itwill become a market place. Captains of industry ! I am full of suspicion. The whole policy reeks to me of the very thing which will ruin this country. Who is to be told? Why should anyone be told? Who is to be selected, and with what object should they be selected? The Government have a policy, and the policy will be announced as soon as conditions will permit. Suppose the conditions do not develop as they anticipate, will the policy be changed? A policy is a policy when a decision has been reached upon it, and if it is a right policy it ought to be announced, because no conditions, however they change, can affect its validity and its value. The President of the Board of Trade said that, of course, it would not be possible to tell private interests. I agree that the method
of selection would be too difficult, and the question of who should be informed in advance would be altogether too delicate to handle, but what I am asking the President of the Board of Trade to remember is this. We have forty-five millions of people in the British Isles, and I want to know whether they are going to be told in advance the Government's policy before the Government attempts to carry it out? To say that the Prime Minister's letter indicated that those who supported him at the last election wore pledged to the sort of policy represented by the hon. Member for Chippenham's speech is an absurdity that I am surprised at anyone perpetrating. We never for a moment abandoned our Free Trade position. I said again and again that I was a free trader, and I have sufficient respect for our history to know that if we once abandon our Free Trade, this country will go to a third or a fourth - class nation. An hon. Gentleman opposite laughs at that remark. I am sure he will bear with me while I for one moment attempt to prove it, and I will prove it, if I may, by the argument of the President of the Board of Trade, who drew a very interesting picture of the world now substantially divided into two parts, one bankrupt Europe, the other wealthy America. Suppose that is true, are we going to right wealthy America with tariffs, and if so arc we going to survive? If we want to fight America, with her great resources, by tariffs, we are doomed to destruction at the outset. When this War broke out we held nearly £1,000,000,000 worth of American securities. She was a debtor nation to us of nearly £1,200,000,000. With all her resources she was a debtor nation. To-day she is a creditor nation. If it is supposed that we can secure the commercial strength and position of this country by tariffs, which mean restriction of trade, that is a supposition in the mind of any man which I gladly leave him to enjoy.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: Will the hon. Gentleman explain whether he means that the £1,200,000,000 we had in America was money we made out of America and left there, or whether it was the savings we had made in other parts of the world and had put into a protective country?

Mr. LYLE-SAMUEL: I should think that that answers itself. To begin with, we had the money. That is the first point. The second point is, America owed the
money. The third point is that the money was not put in America because it was a protective country which made it safer. It wag money made in this vastly richer Free Trade country, made in such abundance as to enable us to help finance a country limiting its own commercial capacity by its tariff system. That is the explanation. [An HON. MEMBER: "Eye-wash."] May I tell the hon. Member what is not eyewash? That is that that position has been entirely reversed. America has got that money back, and more yet, and now we are going to turn our backs— if we follow the hon. Member for Chippen-ham—on the policy which enabled us to have America as a debtor nation to us, and, not satisfied with the wealth it thus provided, seize on the policy which must mean commercial ruin to this country as a great world nation. The President of the Board of Trade asked the question, Is there any dumping? and he said no, there was a suspicion of something that might be dumping, but fortunately they were able to prevent it. If there is one thing this strained, stricken nation needs at this moment, it is a healthy dose of dumping. There are 45,000,000 consumers. Ask them if they would like a little dumping. The producers are deliberately whittling down their capacity for production, because by that means and the aid of import restrictions they make more money out of two factories than they can out of four or six. The less they produce the higher their profits, and we are in a vicious circle. Up goes the price of labour. We are all living in a fool's paradise. I am absolutely appalled at the present time. There is one thing alone that can save this country. Let the Government's hand get off trade. It is a strangle-hold. Give our British commercial men a chance. They have got the commercial ability and experience, and they have still, thank God, the financial resources to carry on trade in any part of the world and beat any tariff country at their own game. We are the greatest commercial people in this world. When it is reflected that we have got but one raw material—coal—to export, and that we have had competition from every quarter of the globe to endure for fifty years since industrialism became the aim of the whole world, when the position we occupied in Europe in 1914 is considered, I think it is fitting that tribute should be paid to the commercial men of this country in being as astute as any commercial man in the
world. The suggestion is that dumping is an evil; it is proper that it should be placed side by side with the suggestion that we must protect our key industries. The hon. Member for Cippingham gave us his definition of key industries, and I respect him for it. A key industry is any industry which needs protection. A franker definition could not have been used. The hon. Member for Cippingham deserves the thanks of this House—[HON. MEMBER: "Chippingham!"] — I was thinking of another scandal—the hon. Member for Chippenham, I say, deserves the thanks of this House for having restored the Debates in this House to something of that frankness and candour which existed in previous Parliaments. I was not a Member of a previous Parliament, but I have listened to many Debates. They were real Debates. This is not a real Debate. This is a ridiculous Debate. It is a waste of our time. It is earning us the contempt of the country. It is making it futile for any Member to come to this House.
We are told that there are rumours going about that this House will shortly come to a dissolution. I profoundly hope it may be so if this is to be a typical Debate. I take it that the President of the Hoard of Trade realises the gravity of his position and the responsibility that lies upon him. What I am saying is not personal, for I have a great admiration for the right hon. Gentleman and for what he has achieved during the War. But he is not accustomed to the Parliamentary traditions of this country. He has achieved a great position during the War, when it was a natural means of defence for any Minister, when pushed into a corner, to say that he must stand or fall by the clearly defined policy that it was not in the national interest to discuss any given question. Here we are to-day, a trading, commercial people; all our wealth comes from our commerce. We are pouring more of our capital out in unemployment doles, while the labour market is in the most serious condition. Yet the President of the Board of Trade is asked in this House to give the policy of the Government. He tells the House that the policy is decided. It is written out— typewritten—I suppose that it may be read —in a box, and locked. What does a single Member know about it. What are we here for? We have got to go to the country sometime on that policy at no distant date, and we will be asked why we did not protest against this sort of thing.
But it is no matter whether or not we protest in this House. I protest now. But it does not matter. If twenty-five Members on this side of the House and twenty-five Members on the other side of the House protested it would be all the same. The President has his policy typewritten. He has got it in a box locked up. We need to know that policy.
I think the time has come for the Government to declare their policy. I repudiate the suggestion that those who had the coupon during the election were pledged to the policy represented by the Motion we are discussing. The only policy for the Government to declare is that the Government controls introduced during the War and justified by the War should be at once removed. The Government in this matter must get out of the way and allow business men to build up trade again. When they have done that and got out of the way, the economic resources of this country are so great, and our trading and commercial capacity are so supreme, that we shall soon win back the position we held before the War, and then our economic and social difficulties will disappear, and our strength will survive.

Major Sir KEITH FRASER: This question of Tariff Reform ought never to have been brought before this House to-day, because we have had enough trouble over it in former days. Surely this is a matter which should be left to the Board of Trade and the Chambers of Commerce, assisted by the members of the Local Chambers of Commerce, and the men connected with the particular trades concerned. This subject can be boiled down to one point. You should take each trade on its own and deal with it according to its own peculiar circumstances. These are not questions for hon. Members of this House, and it is not either a party or a political subject. Surely the Board of Trade ought to settle these matters, and the sooner this Debate is over the better.

Sir WILLIAM BARTON: This Motion deals with dumping and key industries, but as the Debate has proceeded it has become apparent that immediately you tackle these points you have to proceed to much wider issues. The Mover of this Motion indulged in some very interesting banter as to the embarrassment which he felt his Motion would cause amongst the supporters of the Coalition. I do not think
that any of us up to the present in this Debate have shown any very great consciousness of that embarrassment. Before the Election, as a supporter of the Coalition Government, I thought it necessary to make one or two points quite clear, and I declared myself an unrepentant and an unqualified Free Trader. It may be said: "What about the constituency which elected you?" There, I equally declared myself a complete Free Trader, and was duly returned to this House. We are told, however, that we are coupon holders, and that we are bound by the contents of some coupon. My election agent asked me if I had had this coupon, and I had to confess that I did not know. Subsequently, I did find it among my papers. I quite recognise that many who voted for me at the election would undoubtedly agree with my hon. Friend rather than with me in this matter. The last election largely centred round the point whether the Coalition Government was on the whole the best instrument whereby the nation could be served in ending the War and securing a satisfactory peace. I have no doubt whatever that was the real issue settled in that election. I have been struck by the fact that in every speech supporting this Motion there has been no thought of and no reference to our export trade. The whole thing has proceeded upon the assumption that the interests of the country are purely and simply in our home trade. Surely, there can be nothing further from the actual facts of the situation. We are dependent to a very great extent for our national wealth and strength upon our export trade, and without an import trade you cannot have an. export trade.
The question, after all, is as to dumping and as to key industries. My hon. Friend below me (Mr. Bigland), in a most interesting speech, dealt more in detail and more closely with key industries than any other speaker, and he used two illustrations, both of which are extraordinarily significant. One of them was in relation to the importation of steel into this country. I remember when the late distinguished Mr. Chamberlain produced his policy of tariffs that there was in the minds of a great many men, Free Traders and others, an inquiring spirit and a desire really to study whether there was something in the policy of this man who, they felt, was a great and strong man
and a wise statesman. Among these was a relative of my own connected with a large shipbuilding firm and he became a strong advocate of Mr. Chamberlain's policy. Some months afterwards I saw in the papers that till company with which he was connected toad obtained an order for six merchant vessels. A few days later I learned that there had been a large purchase of Belgian steel, and, associating the two things, I went to this relative and asked him whether they were in any way connected. He said, "Yes, we have bought that steel" I said, "How do you reconcile, that with your publicly expressed policy?" He said: The position was this: If we had not bought that steel, we could not have taken those contracts. Other countries were prepared to buy it. The price in this country was such that we had to get it over there, but as a result a very much larger amount of labour was employed than would have been obtained by its production, and more men were employed on the building of ships than would have been employed in making the steel. There might be some justification for protection if thereby we were going to employ more men than would be employed in the industry in which they used the raw material. My hon. Friend used another illustration—Phenacetin—a very small by-product among the many by-products of the coal tar industry which was developed in Germany to an extent which became colossal towards the end. We in this country had an equal if not a better opportunity of developing that industry than Germany. It was an English idea; it was born in Manchester and the real reason we lost it was the lack of enterprise on the part of our capitalists and the greater enterprise of the German capitalists. Before the War we bought phenacetin from Germany at 4s. 6d. But here it has reached a price of something like 18s., which has now come down to 10s. 6d.—or four times the German price before the War. But I want the country to look, not merely at phenacetin, but at the chemical industry, which enters practically into every industry in this country. Suppose the price at which we produce here as four times the price at which we can import, what would be the effect if we refused to import? It would not matter much if it stopped at the refusal to import. The results might not be so terrible. But does anybody imagine that a nation desirous of building up an
export trade would not import its raw material to the best advantage of that export trade?
Take our textile industry. In practically every piece of goods—and this is the largest of our exporting industries—chemicals enter to some extent, and colouring matter to a very considerable extent. During the War we had enforced Protection. We had not the competition which obtains under ordinary circumstances, but 1 per cent. will frequently turn the tide and decide whether a contract shall be obtained for this country or go to some other country. And the country which imports its chemicals at one-fourth of the cost at which you are producing them will undoubtedly swamp you, and properly so, in competing for the export trade. We must look at this matter as a whole. You cannot have Protection in small instalments. If you choose a policy it must be for all, and I contend that the nation which depends largely on export trade has its surest basis in the Free Trade policy. I am not ashamed to confess that I believe that if we had a wholly Protectionist world, the best way to fight that Protection is by open ports. The best way to supply your customers with what they need at the lowest price, and the best way to obtain employment by building up the largest export trade is by free and open ports.
One or two hon. Members, and also the President of the Board of Trade, referred very largely to the possible effect of exchanges on our future policy. I have been interested in the export trade all my life, and if there is one conclusion more than another to which I have come, it is that exchanges have nothing like the effect on trade that they are generally supposed to have. At bottom, trade is bargaining. It is the exchange of goods for goods, of like for like. In the long run the country which so arranges itself that it can produce to the best advantage and sell at the cheapest prices is the country which will not only make its own people most comfortable but will secure the largest share of the export trade of the world. I therefore say that I deeply regret those observations which have been freely made in this Debate, and which seemed to have some countenance from the President of the Board of Trade, that these are matters to be settled by chambers of commerce, by the Board of Trade, and by captains of industry. They are nothing of the kind. They are vital to
every working man and working woman in this country. I have cordially supported this Government. I still believe it was a necessary instrument for carrying on this War, and I believe it has done magnificent work both in the War and in the Peace. But I say unhesitatingly that if I am asked, as a supporter of this Government, to abandon those principles of Free Trade which I believe to be best for the country, there will be no hesitation about my answer.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: The fruits of the late Prime Minister's recent speeches are very prominent in this House. There is quite a number of Gentlemen who have supported this Government, but who are now evidently, so far as they can comfortably allow their consciences to lead them, inclined to go back to the husks of the Asquith period. I am not sure that, if they had made all the speeches they have made here at the time they got elected, they would have been here to make them. [HON. MEMBER: "We did!"] I represent an intensely industrial working-class constituency, and I am perfectly sure that none of them agree with the views that have been expressed. I listened with great interest to the views of one hon. Member with regard to the wealth of this country. You would think that, according to him, the wealth of the country was originally made by a gentleman named Cobden, and originally began about 1846. That is an entirely false view to take of the wealth of this country. This country built up its wealth and its great resources in centuries before. The wealth that has been spent in this War has been the accumulation of the previous ten generations, and it was built up long before Free Trade was thought of. The only reason why Free Trade did not do the amount of injury it might have been expected to do is that the rest of Europe was mixed up in continual conflict and strife, and as we were the pioneers in industrialism we got the start of them all. As soon as the other countries picked up and began their industrial systems and began to organise their resources; as soon as Germany in particular mobilised its capital and began to make attacks with concentrated capital in the same way as it did with concentrated military forces at special points, it was gradually extinguishing industry by industry in tins country. If you have a small isolated indi-
vidual set of manufacturers who get up against a huge cartel system such as prevailed in Germany, and will prevail again very soon, the individual capitalist cannot have a chance of surviving. It is all very well to say, as the late Prime Minister said, that dumping will kill itself: it can not go on long. No one can go on long enough to extinguish a particular industry in a particular country, and that is all the length of time it needs to go on. If you are dealing with an industry of any kind, the main thing people want is security, and they want the security of their own market, and then there is a chance, if you have over production at any time, that they may export if 'they can find other countries foolish enough to give them an open port, and that is what leads to the destruction of industry in the country that has to take their surplus products. I believe it is a far sounder maxim than setting yourself out to consider always the consumer, to consider the producer first, and the consumer will take care of himself. After all, the consumer may belong either to the idle rich or the idle poor. I do not care which, but he maybe idle. But the producer is the person who is working, and the main thing is to secure a steady source of output and a steady market for his goods, and it is very difficult to secure that if he is liable to be raided at any time by the surplus products of over-production in other countries. I remember once getting rather an insight into the question of land. I was looking at a farm that did not seem to be particularly well cultivated, and I was talking to a member of the Farmers' Union, as intelligent a man as any first-class farmer I have ever met, and we noticed that the farm was rather neglected, and he said, '"That farm has neither had capital nor labour sufficiently expended upon it." I said, "Why is that?" He said, "The man will have got it at such a low rent that without very much trouble he can make an easy living. If he had more rent to pay, he would have to apply capital and labour to it, and would have to bestir himself and make a proper industry of it. But how can you expect a man to risk his capital over a long rotation of crops when some fellow in Leith or Glasgow can send a cable to the end of the earth which will bring him shiploads of stuff which will ruin him?" That struck me as an extraordinary good observation to get from that source. Those
Members who have spoken of their tremendous confession of faith in Free Trade as if it were a sort of religion really speak as if the War had never happened. It has had no effect whatever on their intelligence. They want to get back to party politics, to the old party cries right away. This War has been a tedious nuisance to them. It has interfered with their political industry. I shall never forget the shock with which I read on the day before the great disaster of 21st March, the great German push, a speech by the Leader of the Free Trade Gentlemen, Mr. Asquith, who is still ingeminating the text that he is still the Leader of the Liberal party and hammering away at that worn-out text as though his own desire was to get right away and get on with party politics. I hope the House is freed from party politics. I think the country elected it largely in the hope that it was going to do away with all those worn-out cries. The whole of the discussion for the last half-century in regard to Free Trade and Protection originated from the fact that a gentleman named Adam Smith once wrote a very pernicious book called "The Wealth of Nations," in which he proceeded to prove that the wealth of nations consisted in its bank accounts, its stocks and shares, its imports and exports. I am one of those who believe that the wealth of a nation consists in the people who inhabit the country, and that these questions of trade, while they are very important, are not so important as the main thing, which is to rear strong, healthy, and industrious populations. I do not believe so much in the tremendous supremacy of the trading or commercial classes. The hon. Member for Suffolk (Mr. Lyle-Samuel) talked about the tremendous skill of our trading classes and our merchants. The people I want to see thrive in this country are the producers. It is not so much the man who buys in one market and sells in another, and who takes a rake and rakes in profit as the goods are passing through. What we want as far as possible is to get rid of the middleman in every trade and industry. The middleman is the man who rakes in the profit. That is the trouble of the fishing industry at the present moment. Take the fish when it is landed at the pier, and you will find that the price which is got by the man who braves the perils of the deep is very small compared with what it is when you go to buy the fish in a shop.
The same applies in the tailoring trade, the boot trade, and in all trades. It is the case of the middleman right through. The reason why we have all this desire for Free Trade is that we have bred in our community a certain section of men who in a sense toil not, neither do they spin. They are people who simply buy the productions of other races or peoples and get them into this country. If they find that a local producer is annoying them they proceed to crush him out with the resources of their organised capital, with the result that they kill an industry. It seemed to annoy the hon. Member for Suffolk that wages are very high. I am not a bit annoyed. I should be very sorry to see a reduction of wages. I believe the working classes of this country when they understand this craze for cheapness which has led them so far astray will begin to see things in the right light. Let us remember that Free Trade was only introduced by Cobden, who was a commercial traveler and not a producer. It was only introduced to get cheap food in order that they got cheap wages, and for no other purpose. It was not introduced to benefit the working classes as a whole. It is a thousand times better to have a good wage even though you may have to pay a little more for the articles you consume. Otherwise you may find yourselves in the position you read about in Carlyle's "Past and Present," in the middle of the industrial system of the fifties, when there were thousands of men standing about practically unemployed and rate-aided, when wages were at an absolute minimum and democracy was exploited in such a way that it took a great Tory, Lord Shaftes-bury, to do something to mitigate affairs by his Factory Acts. The consequence of unbridled Free Trade and unbridled competition has resulted in the exploiting of the working classes and now we have Gentlemen in this House who want to get back to the old wicked system. They do not want to protect industries or to protect the wage-earner but they wish to leave them to what they call the free play of the market, and to allow the law of supply and demand to affect the working classes in the same way that it affects the market. The working man who has a wife and child has no freedom of contract. He has to work day in and day out. He cannot—
It being Eleven of the clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

SUPPLY.

STANDING COMMITTEE C [13TH MAY].

Postponed Proceeding resumed on Question,
That this House doth agree with the Committee in the Resolution 'That a sum, not exceeding £54,600, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for Expenditure in respect of Houses of Parliament Buildings.'

Question again proposed.

It being after Eleven of the clock, and objection being taken to further Proceeding, the Debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed To-morrow.

Subsequent Resolutions to be further considered To-morrow.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

ADJOURNMENT.

Motion made, and Question, "That this House do now adjourn"—[Mr. Pratt]— put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at One minute past Eleven o'clock